There was much competition among countries for colonies. Quebec and then Montreal in 1760 in Canada were captured from the French. About 1768 James Cook discovered New Zealand and Australia; his maps greatly helped future voyages. The English East India Company took over India as its Mogul Empire broke up.
Manufacturing in the American colonies that would compete with British industry was suppressed by Great Britain. There were increasing duties on goods imported into the colonies and restrictions on exports. In 1763, Parliament imposed duties on foreign imports going to America via Britain: to wit, sugar, indigo, coffee, certain wines, wrought silks, calicoes, and cambrick linen. Foreign vessels at anchor or hovering on colonial coasts and not departing within 48 hours were made liable to be forfeited with their goods. Uncustomed goods into or prohibited goods into or out of the colonies seized by customs officials on the ship or on land and any boats and cattle used to transport them occasioned a forfeiture of treble value, of which 1/3 went to the king, 1/3 went to the colonial governor, and 1/3 went to the suer. Any officer making a collusive seizure or other fraud was to forfeit 500 pounds and his office. In 1765, there was imposed a duty on papers in the colonies to defray expenses of their defense. It was thought to be a fair tax because it fell on colonies in proportion to their wealth. The items taxed were to carry a stamp showing that the duty on them had been paid. The duty on every skin, piece of vellum or parchment, and sheet of paper used in any law court was 3d.- 2 pounds. There were also duties on counselor or solicitor appointments of 10 pounds per sheet. Duties extended to licenses for retailing spirituous liquors and wines, bonds for payment of money, warrants for surveying or setting out of any lands, grants and deeds of land, appointments to certain civil public offices, indentures, leases, conveyances, bills of sale, grants and certificates under public seal, insurance policies, mortgages, passports, pamphlets, newspapers (about 1s. per sheet), advertisements in papers (2s. each), cards, and dice. The colonists saw this as a departure from past duties because it was an "internal tax". All of the original thirteen American colonies had adopted Magna Carta principles directly or indirectly into their law. The stamp duties seemed to the colonists to violate these principles of liberty. Patrick Henry asserted that only Virginia could impose taxes in Virginia. Schoolmaster and lawyer John Adams in Massachusetts asserted that no freeman should be subject to any tax to which he had not assented. In theory, colonists had the same rights as Englishmen per their charters, but in fact, they were not represented in Parliament and Englishmen in Parliament made the laws which affected the colonists. They could not be members of the House of Lords because they did not have property in England. There were demonstrations and intimidation of stamp agents by the Sons of Liberty. Merchants agreed to buy no more goods from England. The stamp duty was repealed the same year it had been enacted because it had been "attended with many inconveniences and may be productive of consequences greatly detrimental to the commercial interests of these kingdoms".
To counter the wide-scale running of goods to avoid the customs tax, the customs office was reorganized in 1766 to have commissions resident in the colonies and courts of admiralty established there to expedite cases of smuggling. This angered the colonists, especially Boston. Boston smuggling had become a common and respectable business. It was the port of entry for molasses from the West Indies from which New England rum was made and exported. The entire molasses trade that was essential to the New England economy had been built upon massive customs evasions; royal customs officials had participated in this by taking token customs for the sake of appearance on London and thereby had become rich.
In 1766 Parliament imposed a duty of 3d. per pound weight on tea and duties on reams of paper, glass, and lead into the colonies. These import duties were presented as external rather than internal taxes to counter the rationale the colonies gave against the stamp tax. But these items were of common use and their duties raised the cost of living. The king's customs officials were authorized to enter any house, warehouse, shop, or cellar to search for and seize prohibited or uncustomed goods by a general writ of assistance.
These writs of assistance had been authorized before and had angered Bostonians because they had been issued without probable cause. In Paxton's case of 1761, the Massachusetts Superior Court had declared legal the issuance of general writs of assistance to customs officers to search any house for specific goods for which customs had not been paid. The authority for this was based on the Parliamentary statutes of 1660 and 1662 authorizing warrants to be given to any person to enter, with the assistance of a public official any house where contraband goods were suspected to be concealed, to search for and seize those goods, using force if necessary. They were called "writs of assistance" because the bearer could command the assistance of a local public official in making entry and seizure. A "general" writ of assistance differed from a "special" writ of assistance in that the latter was issued on a one-time basis. The general writ of assistance in Boston was good for six months after the death of the issuing sovereign. Authority relied on for such writs was a 1696 statute giving customs officers in the colonies the same powers as those in England, a 1699 act by the Massachusetts Provincial Legislature giving the Superior Court of Massachusetts the same such power as that of the Exchequer, and the Massachusetts' Governor's direction about 1757 to the Massachusetts Superior Court of Judicature to perform the function of issuing such warrants. The Massachusetts court issued them in the nature of the writs of assistance issued from the Exchequer court in England, but had issued them routinely instead of requiring the showing of probable cause based on sworn information that the Exchequer court required. Few judges in the other American colonies granted the writ.
Seditious libel trials in England and the colonies were followed closely and their defendants broadly supported. John Wilkes, a member of the House of Commons, published a criticism of a new minister in 1763. He called King George's speech on a treaty "the most abandoned instance of ministerial effrontery ever attempted to be imposed on mankind". After being found guilty of seditious libel, he again ran for the House of Commons, and was repeatedly elected and expelled. He was subsequently elected alderman, sheriff, and mayor of London. In 1770, Alexander MacDougall was voted guilty of seditious libel by the New York Colonial Assembly for authoring a handbill which denounced a collusive agreement by which the assembly voted to furnish supplies for the British troops in New York in exchange for the royal governor's signature to a paper-money bill. When he was arrested, the Sons of Liberty rallied to his support, demanding freedom of the press. Benjamin Franklin's brother had been imprisoned for a month by the Massachusetts assembly for printing in his newspaper criticisms of the assembly. He was forbidden to print the paper. Benjamin supported him by publishing extracts from other papers, such as "Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom; and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech
Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech; a thing terrible to public traitors."
By statute of 1766, the New York house of representatives was prohibited from meeting or voting until they provisioned the King's troops as required by law.
In 1769, Harvard College seated its students in class in alphabetical order instead of by social rank according to birth.
By 1769, the colonies' boycott of British goods in protest of the new duties cause these imports to decline so much that British merchants protested. So the duties were dropped, except for that on tea, which was retained as a matter of principle to assert the power of the crown to tax the colonies. Then in 1773 the East India Company was allowed to sell tea directly to the colonies to help it avoid bankruptcy. The effect of this was to lower the cost of tea in the colonies because the English middleman, and the American middleman, but also to give the East India Company a monopoly. The colonies felt threatened by this power of Britain to give monopolies to traders. When the tea ships arrived in Boston in late 1773, Bostonians held a town meeting and decided not to let the tea be landed. They threw this cargo of tea, worth about 18,000 pounds, overboard. This Boston Tea Party was a direct challenge to British authority. In response, Parliament closed the port of Boston until compensation was made to the East India Company. By statute of 1774, no one may enter or exit the port of Boston or forfeit goods, arms, stores, and boats carrying goods to ships. Every involved wharf keeper shall forfeit treble the value of the goods and any boats, horses, cattle, or carriages used. Ships hovering nearby must depart within six hours of an order by a navy ship or customs officer or be forfeited with all goods aboard, except for ships carrying fuel or victuals brought coastwise for necessary use and sustenance of inhabitants after search by customs officers, and with a customs official and armed men for his defense on board. This statute is passed because of dangerous commotions and insurrections in Boston to the subversion of the king's government and destruction of the public peace in which valuable cargoes of tea were destroyed. Later, the Governor was given the right to send colonists or magistrates charged with murder or other capital offenses, such as might be alleged to occur in the suppression of riots or enforcement of the revenue laws, to England or another colony for trial when he opined that an indifferent trial could not be had in Massachusetts Bay. A later statute that year altered the charter of Massachusetts Bay province so that the choice of its council was transferred from the people to the Crown to serve at his pleasure, and the appointment and removal of judges and appointment of sheriffs was transferred to the Governor to be made without the consent of the council. This was due to the open resistance to the execution of the laws in Boston. Further, no meeting of freeholders or inhabitants of townships may be held without consent of the Governor after expressing the special business of such meeting because there had been too many meetings passing dangerous and unwarranted resolutions. Also, jurors were to be selected by sheriffs rather than elected by freeholders and inhabitants.