The Stamp Act proposed.—Right to tax the Americans asserted.—Stamp Act not new.—Postponement of Action on it
Grenville found an empty treasury, and the national debt increased, in consequence of recent wars, to nearly seven hundred millions of dollars. To meet the current expenses of government, heavy taxation was necessary, and the English people were loudly complaining of the burden. Grenville feared to increase the weight, and looked to the American colonies for relief. He conceived the right * to draw a revenue from them to be undoubted, and, knowing their ability to pay, he formed a plan to tax them indirectly by levying new duties upon foreign articles imported by the Americans. A bill for levying these duties passed the House of Commons in March, 1764, without much notice, except from General Conway, who saw in it the seeds of further encroachments upon the liberties of the colonists. The Assembly of Massachusetts, acting in accordance with instructions given to the Boston representatives, had already denied the right to impose duties. Mr. Otis had published a pamphlet called "The Rights of the British Colonists asserted," which was highly approved here, and a copy was sent to the Massachusetts agent in England. In that pamphlet Mr. Otis used the strong language, "If we are not represented we are slaves!"
Thatcher, of Boston, also published a tract against Parliamentary taxation, and similar publications were made by Dulaney, the secretary of the province of Maryland, by Bland, a leading member of the House of Burgesses of Virginia, and "by authority" in Rhode Island.
On the 5th of May Mr. Grenville submitted to the House of Commons an act proposing a stamp duty,8 at the same time assuring the colonial agents, with whom he had conferred, that he should not press its adoption that session, but would leave the scheme open for consideration. He required the colonies to pay into the treasury a million of dollars per annum, and he would leave it to them to devise a better plan, if possible, than the proposed stamp duty. The idea was not original with Mr. Grenville. It had been held out as early as 1739, by a club of American merchants, at the head of whom were Sir William Keith, governor of Pennsylvania, Joshua Gee, and others. In the colonial Congress at Albany, in 1754, a stamp act was talked of, and at that time Dr. Franklin thought it a just plan for taxing the colonies, conceiving that its operations would affect the several governments fairly and equally. Early in January (1764) Mr. Huske, a native of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, who had obtained a seat in Parliament, desirous of displaying his excessive loyalty, alluded to the proposition of a stamp duty made at the Albany Convention, and delighted the House by asserting the ability of the colonists to pay a liberal tax, and recommending the levying of one that should amount annually to two and a half millions of dollars. *** With these precedents, and the present assurance of Huske, Grenville brought forward his bill. It was received, and, on motion of the mover, its consideration was postponed until the next session.
When the new impost law (which was, in fact, a continuation of former similar acts) and the proposed Stamp Act reached America, discontent was every where visible. Instead of being in a condition to pay taxes, the colonies had scarcely recovered from the effects of the late war; and the more unjust appeared the Stamp Act, when the previous act was about
* Early in March, 1764, it was debated in the House of Commons whether they had a right to tax the Americans, they not being represented, and it was determined unanimously in the affirmative. Of this vote, and the evident determination of ministers to tax the colonics, Mr. Mauduit, the agent of Massachusetts, informed the Assembly, and that body immediately resolved, "That the sole right of giving and granting the money of the people of that province was vested in them as the legal representatives; and that the imposition of taxes and duties by the Parliament of Great Britain, upon a people who are not represented in the House of Commons, is absolutely irreconcilable with their rights—That no man can justly take the property of another without his consent; upon which original principle the right of representation in the same body which exercises the power of making laws for levying taxes, one of the main pillars of the British Constitution, is evidently founded."
** It provided that every skin, or piece of vellum, or parchment, or sheet, or piece of paper used for legal purposes, such as bills, bonds, notes, leases, policies of insurance, marriage licenses, and a great many other documents, in order to be held valid in courts of law, was to be stamped, and sold by public officers appointed for that purpose, at prices which levied a stated tax on every such document. The Dutch had used stamped paper for a long time, and it was familiar to English merchants and companies, but in America it was almost wholly unknown.
*** Gordon, i., 110; Jackson's letter to Lieutenant-governor Hutchinson, December 26th, 1765.
Opposition to Taxation by the Colonies.—Instructions to their Agents.—The Stamp Act introduced in Parliament. Townshend
to intercept their profitable trade with the Spanish main and the West Indies, whence they derived much of their means to pay a tax. The right to tax them was also strenuously denied, and all the colonial Assemblies, wherever the subject was brought up, asserted their sole right to tax themselves. New England passed strong resolutions of remonstrance, and forwarded earnest petitions to the king to pause; and Virginia and New York adopted the same course, using firm, but respectful, language. They demonstrated, by fair argument, that the colonies were neither actually nor virtually represented in the British Parliament; they declared that they had hitherto supposed the pecuniary assistance which Great Britain had given them (the Parliamentary grants during the war) offered from motives of humanity, and not as the price of their liberty; and if she now wished a remuneration, she must make allowance for all the assistance she had received from the colonies during the late war, and for the oppressive restrictions she had imposed upon American commerce. They plainly told Great Britain that, as for her protection, they had full confidence in their own ability to protect themselves against any foreign enemy.