What was parliaments stated purpose for the tax

This made it even more difficult for colonists to pay their debts and taxes. This law would require colonists to purchase a government-issued stamp for legal documents and other paper goods. In Boston, colonists rioted and destroyed the house of the stamp distributor. News of these protests inspired similar activities and protests in other colonies, and thus the Stamp Act served as a common cause to unite the 13 colonies in opposition to the British Parliament.

Under pressure from American colonists and British merchants, the British Government decided it was easier to repeal the Stamp Act than to enforce it. The repeal of the Stamp Act temporarily quieted colonial protest, but there was renewed resistance to new taxes instituted in under the Townshend Acts. Although Parliament did lower taxes levied on other tea importers, the tax-free status of the British East India Company meant that colonial tea traders could not compete.

Enraged colonists responded by encouraging a general boycott of British goods. This famous protest came to be known as the Boston Tea Party. When news of the Tea Party reached England, British officials moved to enforce discipline and order in the colonies. The British Government ordered the closure of the port of Boston until the East India Company was compensated for the destroyed tea. Victory in the war, however, had saddled the British Empire with a tremendous debt.

Britain had long regulated colonial trade through a system of restrictions and duties on imports and exports. In the first half of the 18th century, however, British enforcement of this system had been lax. Starting with the Sugar Act of , which imposed new duties on sugar and other goods, the British government began to tighten its reins on the colonies.

Shortly thereafter, George Grenville , the British first lord of the treasury and prime minister, proposed the Stamp Act; Parliament passed the act without debate in Instead of levying a duty on trade goods, the Stamp Act imposed a direct tax on the colonists. Specifically, the act required that, starting in the fall of , legal documents and printed materials must bear a tax stamp provided by commissioned distributors who would collect the tax in exchange for the stamp.

The law applied to wills, deeds, newspapers, pamphlets and even playing cards and dice. Coming in the midst of economic hardship in the colonies, the Stamp Act aroused vehement resistance.

The colonists also took exception with the provision denying offenders trials by jury. A vocal minority hinted at dark designs behind the Stamp Act. These radical voices warned that the tax was part of a gradual plot to deprive the colonists of their freedoms and to enslave them beneath a tyrannical regime.

Playing off traditional fears of peacetime armies, they wondered aloud why Parliament saw fit to garrison troops in North America only after the threat from the French had been removed. These concerns provided an ideological basis that intensified colonial resistance. Colonial resistance to the act mounted slowly at first, but gained momentum as the planned date of its implementation drew near.

Newspapers throughout the colonies reprinted the resolutions, spreading their radical message to a broad audience. The amendment, introduced in the United States Congress a decade after independence in , was a direct a response to the Quartering Acts, which the colonists had greatly opposed. The amendment is one of the least controversial of the Constitution.

The Sugar and Stamp Acts of and , intended to raise revenue in Great Britain, led to increased resistance from the colonies. The earlier Molasses Act of , which had imposed a tax of six pence per gallon of molasses, had never been effectively collected due to colonial resistance and evasion.

By reducing the rate by half and expanding measures to effectively enforce the tax, the British hoped that the new tax on sugar would actually be collected. These concerns also fed the growing resistance movement that became the American Revolution. The earlier Molasses Act of was passed by Parliament largely at the insistence of large plantation owners in the British West Indies.

Molasses was used in New England for making rum, and the molasses trade had been growing between New England; the Middle colonies; and the French, Dutch, and Spanish West Indian possessions.

However, rather than agreeing to demands to prohibit the colonies from trading with the non-British islands, Parliament instead passed the excessively high tax on the colonies and molasses imported from those islands. If actually collected, the tax would have effectively closed that source to New England and destroyed much of the rum industry.

Soon, smuggling, bribery, and intimidation of customs officials effectively nullified the law. During the French and Indian War, the British government substantially increased its national debt in order to pay for the war. As the war ended in February of , the ministry headed by John Stuart, the Earl of Bute, decided to maintain a standing army of 10, British regular troops in the colonies to protect them, which would also increase post-war expenses.

Raising taxes in Britain was not an option due to virulent protests in England, and the Grenville ministry decided Parliament would raise this revenue instead by taxing the American colonists.

This was something new, as Parliament had previously passed measures to regulate trade in the colonies but had never before directly taxed the colonies to raise revenue. Grenville did not expect the colonies to contribute to the interest or the retirement of the debt; however, he did expect the colonists to pay a portion of the expenses for colonial defense, and so he devised the Sugar Act of to raise those funds.

The Molasses Act was set to expire in The commissioners of customs anticipated greater demand for both molasses and rum as a result of the end of the war and the acquisition of Canada. They believed that the increased demand would make a reduced tax rate both affordable and collectible. When passed by Parliament, the new Sugar Act of halved the previous tax on molasses. In addition to promising stricter enforcement, the language of the bill made it clear that the purpose of the legislation was not to simply regulate trade but to actually raise revenue.

The new act listed specific goods, the most important being lumber, which could only be exported to Britain. Ship captains were required to maintain detailed manifests of their cargo, and the papers were subject to verification before anything could be unloaded from the ships. Customs officials were empowered to have all violations tried in vice admiralty courts rather than by jury trials in local colonial courts, where colonial juries generally looked favorably on smuggling as a profession.

Parliament announced with the passage of the Sugar Act in that they would also consider a stamp tax in the colonies. The act required that many printed materials in the colonies be on stamped paper produced in London, carrying an embossed revenue stamp.

The novelty of the Stamp Act was that it was the first internal tax—that is, a tax based entirely on activities within the colonies and levied directly on the colonies by Parliament. Because of its potential widespread application to the colonial economy, the Stamp Act was judged by the colonists to be a more dangerous assault on their rights than the Sugar Act.

Although opposition to this tax was soon forthcoming, there was little expectation in Britain. Members of Parliament and American agents in Great Britain did not expect the intensity of the protest that the tax would generate. The Sugar Act was passed during a time of economic depression in the colonies. While it was an indirect tax, the colonists were well informed of its presence.

Colonists, especially those affected directly as merchants and shippers, assumed that the highly visible, new tax program was the major culprit for their economic struggles. The Stamp Act was met with even greater resistance in the colonies.

Opposition to the Stamp Act was not limited to the colonies—British merchants and manufacturers, whose exports to the colonies were threatened by colonial economic problems exacerbated by the tax, also pressured Parliament. The First Congress of the American Colonies, also known as the Stamp Act Congress, was held in to devise a unified protest against British taxation.

The colonies sent no representatives to British Parliament, and therefore had no influence over what taxes were raised, how they were levied, or how they would be spent.

Many colonists considered it a violation of their rights as Englishmen to be taxed without their consent—consent that only the colonial legislatures could grant. Colonial assemblies sent petitions and protests, reflecting the first significant joint colonial response to any British measure by petitioning Parliament and the King. The theoretical issue that would soon hold center stage was the matter of taxation without representation.

The counter to this argument, held by members of Parliament, was the theory of virtual representation. Since members of Parliament were bound to represent the interests of all British citizens and subjects, colonists—like those disenfranchised subjects in Great Britain—were the recipients of virtual representation in Parliament. This theory, however, ignored a crucial difference between the unrepresented in Britain and the colonists.

Local protest groups led by colonial merchants and landowners established connections through correspondence, creating a loose coalition that extended from New England to Georgia. Protests and demonstrations initiated by the Sons of Liberty often turned violent and destructive as the masses became involved.

Soon, many stamp tax distributors were intimidated into resigning their commissions, and the tax was never effectively collected. There followed a series of new taxes and regulations, likewise opposed by the colonists. The passage of the Stamp Act in the colonies was followed by a marked rise of organized protest movements and groups, including the Sons of Liberty. Previously, Parliament imposed only external taxes on imports.

However, the Stamp Act provided the first internal tax on the colonists and faced vehement opposition throughout the colonies. Merchants threatened to boycott British products, and thousands of New Yorkers rioted near the location where the stamps were stored. After , the major American cities saw the formation of secret groups set up to defend their rights. Groups such as these were absorbed into the greater Sons of Liberty organization, a political group made up of American patriots formed to protect the rights of the colonists from the usurpations of the British government after And for and upon every pack of playing cards, and all dice, which shall be sold or used within the said colonies and plantations, the several stamp duties following that is to say.

And for and upon every paper, commonly called a pamphlet, and upon every newspaper, containing publick news, intelligence, or occurrences, which shall be printed, dispersed, and made publick, within any of the said colonies and plantations, and for and upon such advertisements as are herein after mentioned, the respective duties following that is to say.

For every other almanack or calendar for any one particular year, which shall be written or printed within the said colonies or plantations, a stamp duty of four pence. Brief attention is made toward the taxes imposed upon official documents, playing cards, pamphlets and newspapers. It sometimes is noted that many of these taxes were relatively insignificant.

Recognizing the limitations of class time, these selections have been significantly edited, reduced, or eliminated.