American Colonies Oppose the Stamp Act

This series has four easy 5-minute installments. This first installment: Parliament Passes the Stamp Act.

Introduction
While the injustice of the Stamp Act may have been obvious to everyone, it has never been obvious to me.

[Jack Le Moine]

Just a few years before the British had shouldered the main cost of waging and winning the French and Indian War. It seems only fair that the colonists should have helped paying down the debts incurred from it.

Their problem wasn’t paying the money; it was lack of control. Their motto “no taxes without representation” revealed what the dispute was really about. The below expands on this.

The selections are from:

• History of the Rise and Progress of the United States by James Grahame.
• History of the United States, from the Discovery of the American Continent. by George Bancroft published in 1878.

For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

There’s 3 installments by James Grahame and 1 installment by George Bancroft.

We begin with James Grahame.

Time: 1765

The calamities of the French and Indian War (1755) had scarcely ended when the germ of another war was planted which soon grew up and produced deadly fruit. At that time sundry resolutions passed the British Parliament relative to the imposition of a stamp duty in America, which gave a general alarm. By them the right, the equity, the policy, and even the necessity of taxing the colonies were formally avowed. These resolutions, being considered as the preface of a system of American revenue, were deemed an introduction to evils of much greater magnitude. They opened a prospect of oppression, boundless in extent and endless in duration. They were, nevertheless, not immediately followed by any legislative act. Time and an invitation were given to the Americans to suggest any other mode of taxation that might be equivalent in its produce to the Stamp Act; but they objected not only to the mode, but the principle; and several of their assemblies, though in vain, petitioned against it.

An American revenue was, in England, a very popular measure. The cry in favor of it was so strong as to silence the voice of petitions to the contrary. The equity of compelling the Americans to contribute to the common expenses of the empire satisfied many who, without inquiring into the policy or justice of taxing their unrepresented fellow-subjects, readily assented to the measures adopted by the Parliament for this purpose. The prospect of easing their own burdens at the expense of the colonists dazzled the eyes of gentlemen of landed interest, so as to keep out of their view the probable consequences of the innovation. The omnipotence of Parliament was so familiar a phrase on both sides of the Atlantic that few in America, and still fewer in Great Britain, were impressed, in the first instance, with any idea of the illegality of taxing the colonists.

Illumination on that subject was gradual. The resolutions in favor of an American stamp act, which passed in March, 1764, met with no opposition. In the course of the year which intervened between these resolutions and the passing of a law grounded upon them, the subject was better understood, and constitutional objections against the measure were urged by several, both in Great Britain and America. This astonished and chagrined the British ministry; but as the principle of taxing America had been for some time determined upon, they were unwilling to give it up. Impelled by partiality for a long-cherished idea, Grenville, in March, 1765, brought into the House of Commons his long-expected bill for laying a stamp duty in America. By this, after passing through the usual forms, it was enacted that the instruments of writing in daily use among a commercial people should be null and void unless they were executed on stamped paper or parchment, charged with a duty imposed by the British Parliament.

When the bill was brought in, Charles Townshend concluded a speech in its favor with words to the following effect:

And now will these Americans, children planted by our care, nourished up by our indulgence, till they are grown to a degree of strength and opulence, and protected by our arms — will they grudge to contribute their mite to relieve us from the heavy weight of that burden which we lie under?”

To which Colonel Barre replied:

They planted by your care? No, your oppressions planted them in America! They fled from tyranny to a then uncultivated and inhospitable country, where they exposed themselves to almost all the hardships to which human nature is liable; and, among others, to the cruelty of a savage foe the most subtle, and I will take upon me to say the most formidable, of any people upon the face of God’s earth! And yet, actuated by principles of true English liberty, they met all hardships with pleasure, compared with those they suffered in their own country from the hand of those that should have been their friends.

They nourished up by your indulgence? They grew by your neglect of them! As soon as you began to care about them, that care was exercised in sending persons to rule them, in one department and another, who were, perhaps, the deputies of deputies to some members in this House, sent to spy out their liberties, to misrepresent their actions, and to prey upon them: men whose behavior on many occasions has caused the blood of those sons of liberty to recoil within them; men promoted to the highest seats of justice — some who to my knowledge were glad, by going to a foreign country, to escape being brought to the bar of a court of justice in their own.

They protected by your arms? They have nobly taken up arms in your defense, have exerted a valor, amid their constant and laborious industry, for the defense of a country whose frontier was drenched in blood, while its interior parts yielded all its little savings to your emolument. And, believe me, that same spirit of freedom which actuated these people at first will accompany them still: but prudence forbids me to explain myself further. God knows I do not at this time speak from any motives of party heat. I deliver the genuine sentiments of my heart. However superior to me, in general knowledge and experience, the respectable body of this House may be, yet I claim to know more of America than most of you; having seen and been conversant in that country. The people, I believe, are as truly loyal as any subjects the King has; but a people jealous of their liberties, and who will vindicate them if ever they should be violated: but the subject is too delicate. I will say no more.”

During the debate on the bill, the supporters of it insisted much on the colonies being virtually represented in the same manner as Leeds, Halifax, and some other towns were. A recurrence to this plea was a virtual acknowledgment that there ought not to be taxation without representation. It was replied that the connection between the electors and non-electors of Parliament, in Great Britain, was so interwoven from both being equally liable to pay the same common tax as to give some security of property to the latter: but with respect to taxes laid by the British Parliament, and paid by the Americans, the situation of the parties was reversed. Instead of both parties bearing a proportional share of the same common burden, what was laid on the one was exactly so much taken off from the other.

The bill met with no opposition in the House of Lords; and, on March 22, 1765, it received the royal assent. The night after it passed, Dr. Franklin wrote to Charles Thomson: “The sun of liberty is set; you must light up the candles of industry and economy.” Thomson answered, “I was apprehensive that other lights would be the consequence”; and he foretold the opposition which shortly took place. On its being suggested from authority that the stamp officers would not be sent from Great Britain, but selected from among the Americans, the colony agents were desired to point out proper persons for that purpose. They generally nominated their friends, which affords a presumptive proof that they supposed the act would have gone down. In this opinion they were far from being singular.

George Bancroft begins here.

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