Parliament’s Stamp Act Dilemma

In 1763, the powers of Europe signed the Peace of Paris bringing an end to the French and Indian War. The Kingdom of Great Britain emerged victorious, seizing from France several new territories throughout Canada and east of the Mississippi. But victory came at tremendous cost. The war debt incurred over the last seven years placed a significant strain on Britain’s financial resources. Even during peace, the cost to maintain and defend the Kingdom’s colonial interests rose significantly due to the newly acquired regions.

George Grenville, the newly appointed First Lord of the Treasury, eagerly searched for a way to relieve Britain’s economic burden. In Grenville’s mind, the American colonies had benefited most from the war and therefore should contribute more toward the debt. But British Americans had mastered the art of tax evasion, making taxing them a tricky business. For decades, the British Government turned a blind eye to the enforcement of trade laws in the American colonies, focusing instead on expanding its influence and power throughout Europe.[1] Lord Walpole, one of Grenville’s predecessors, believed relaxing tax enforcements proved beneficial, not only for the colonies, but for the overall revenue of the Kingdom:

I will leave the taxation of America for some of my successors, who may have more courage than I have, and be less a friend to commerce than I am. It had been a maxim with me, during my Administration, to encourage the trade of the American colonies in the utmost latitude; nay, it has been necessary to pass over some irregularities in their trade with Europe; for, by encouraging them to an extensive growing foreign commerce, if they gain £500,000 I am convinced, that in two years afterwards, full £250,000 of their gain will be in His Majesty’s exchequer, by the labour and product of this kingdom; as immense quantities of every kind of our manufacturing go thither; and as they increase in their foreign American trade, more of our produce will be wanted. This is taxing them more agreeably to their own constitution and to ours.[2]

But Grenville came to different convictions. The best way to rapidly increase funds was through the implementation of new taxes. Parliament agreed. In March of 1764, the House of Commons passed the Sugar Tax in order to defray “the necessary expenses of defending, protecting, and securing the British Colonies and Plantations in America.”[3] But Grenville knew the revenue wouldn’t yield enough. During the same session he proposed the idea of a more controversial tax:

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That it is the opinion of this committee, That, towards further defraying the said expenses, it may be proper to charge certain stamp duties in the said colonies and plantations.[4]

Several objected to the idea, including colonial agents living in London who demanded an immediate meeting with Grenville. Did he really intend to bring forward such a bill? Grenville confirmed he did. According to colonial agent Israel Mauduit, Grenville claimed at the start of the war Great Britain’s national debt stood at sixty-seven million pounds. Now it had grown to one hundred forty million. Conquests in America had multiplied expenses to five times their original amount since the peace of Aix la Chapelle in 1748. Since Americans benefited the most from Britain’s victory, it only made sense they contribute toward the expense. Mauduit wrote that Grenville

thought [a stamp tax] the easiest and the most equitable, that it was a tax which fell only upon property, and would be equally spread over North America and the West Indies so as that all would bear their share of the public burthen. He then went on: ‘I am not however set upon this tax, if the Americans dislike it and prefer any other method of raising the money themselves, I shall be content.’[5]

Despite the controversy, Grenville’s idea wasn’t unique. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, the English government implemented a stamp duty on its citizens to fund a war against France.[6] The government deemed the tax so successful that it was still active during Grenville’s time. Even in the American colonies, Massachusetts took upon itself a stamp tax to raise funds during the early years of the French and Indian War.[7]

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Despite what he said to the agents about entertaining an alternative means of collection, Grenville wasted no time in moving forward with his Stamp Tax. By August, the colonies received formal notification from the Earl of Halifax:

The House of Commons having, in the last Session of Parliament, come to a Resolution, by which it is declared that, towards defraying the necessary expenses of defending protecting & securing the British Colonies & Plantations in America, it may be proper to charge certain Stamp Duties in the said Colonies & Plantations; It is His Majesty’s Pleasure, that you should transmit to me, without Delay, a List of all Instruments made Use of in public Transactions, Law Proceedings, Grants, Conveyances, Securities of Land or Money, within Your Government, with proper & sufficient Descriptions of the same, in Order that if Parliament should think proper to pursue the Intention of the aforesaid Resolution, they may thereby be enabled to carry it into Execution, in the most effectual and least burthensome Manner.[8]

Grenville assigned the difficult task of drafting the actual legislation to his secretary, Thomas Whatley. Differences between the colonial governments and the home country made England’s current stamp duty impossible to implement in North America. Hoping to craft a more suitable bill, Whatley reached out to several colonial contacts for help. He appealed especially to John Temple, Boston’s surveyor general, about the Massachusetts Stamp Tax of 1755.

I know there has been a Stamp Act in your Colony. I should be glad to know what was its product & on what Articles it chiefly produced? What Difficulties have [occurred] in executing it? What objections may be made to it & what additional provisions must be made to those in force here?[9]

Temple admitted a stamp tax would bring significant revenue. “I suppose it will yield upwards of forty thousand pound sterling annum in my district,”[10] but not without negatively impacting colonial trade with British merchants.

Our people are extravagantly fond of [show] & dress and have no bounds to their importation of British manufactories but their want of money. Suppose a Stamp Tax to take place & to yield sixty thousand a year to be collected in America & sent home, there would certainly be £60,000 worth of goods less imported from Great Britain, besides such a sum of money laying still in coffers for the Crown instead of circulating in the Colonies, already very much drained of cash.[11]

By November, the House of Commons began receiving colonial communications describing economic fears brought about by the Sugar Tax. The Massachusetts Bay Council and House of Representatives sent a petition for repeal, claiming such a measure wouldn’t have been enacted “if a full representation of the State of the Colonies had been made to this honorable House.”[12] Benjamin Hallowell, the Comptroller for Customs in Boston, wrote to Grenville’s office warning that the colonies had no experience with something like the Sugar Tax. “The people here are so little acquainted with paying of duties that they had rather be charged with a shilling on the exportation than ninepence on the importation here, they saying that money is hard to be got, and they can always find some kind of produce to be sent to Great Britain, to pay for such goods as they may import from thence.” Hallowell echoed Temple’s warning to Whatley about limited funds sitting idly after collection: “They also say that money will be scarce as that all the duties to be collected for the Crown is to be remitted into the Exchequer.”[13]

The negative impact of the Sugar Tax combined with the concerns of both colonial representatives and British manufacturers, caused some in Parliament to question the wisdom of moving forward with the Stamp Act. Nathanial Ryder, a member of the House of Commons, recorded in his diary an infamous debate that took place on February 6, 1765. Objections raised the previous year had challenged Parliament’s right to even tax the colonies. They held no legal representation within Parliament and their colonial charters stated that taxes could only come from representatives elected by the people. Grenville believed it a ridiculous argument:

The Parliament of Great Britain virtually represents the whole Kingdom, not actually great trading towns. The merchants of London and East India Company are not represented. Not a twentieth part of the people are actually represented. All colonies are subject to the dominion of the mother country, whether they are a colony of the freest or the most absolute government. As to their charter, the Crown cannot exempt them by charter from paying taxes which are imposed by the whole legislature[14]

A new tax inconvenienced everyone, he argued. Different groups throughout the Kingdom requested exemption from contributions; but for the good of the whole, all must contribute. The cost of the navy alone had nearly doubled, and most of it in service to the American colonies. In fact, the current level of military force in the colonies proved insufficient.[15] The Stamp Act ensured the fairest way to raise necessary funds. “It takes in a great degree its proportion from the riches of the people. As in lawsuits and commercial contracts, it increases in proportion to the riches.”[16]

Lord William Beckford disagreed. British Americans recognized Parliament’s right to levy taxes on imports and exports, he challenged, but internal taxes, such as the Sugar and Stamp Taxes, they viewed differently. If Parliament wanted to lower the debt, then they should first eliminate all unnecessary troop levels in the colonies. “No revenue arises from it, but on the contrary a great amount of expense. The North Americans would be glad to be rid of such troops from the Government and the expense of supporting them.”[17]

Lord Charles Townshend, a member of Grenville’s faction, argued in favor of the tax. The word “colony” implied “subordination,” thereby giving Parliament the right to tax America as it deemed appropriate. The successful history of colonial trade proved the Americans were financially stable enough to endure the Stamp Tax. They should be willing to do so if they desired the future defense of the British Navy. “If America looks to Great Britain for protection, she must enable her to protect her. If she expects our fleets, she must assist our revenue.”[18]

Among the members of the House sat Isaac Barré, a veteran of the French and Indian War. The experience of fighting alongside colonial soldiers provided Barré with a unique perspective of the Americans. Though he never questioned Great Britain’s sovereignty, Barré held a more sympathetic view toward the colonial position. Since the effects of the Sugar Act had yet to be fully realized, he urged caution in proceeding with the Stamp Act. “We are working in the dark, and the less we do the better.”[19]

At one point, Townshend likened the colonials to selfish children abandoning a parent in need. “And now will these Americans, children planted by our care, nourished up by our indulgences until 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?”[20]

Barré found the statement absurd:

They planted by your care? No! your oppressions planted them in America. They fled from your tyranny to a then uncultivated and unhospitable country ¾ where they exposed themselves to almost all the hardships to which human nature is liable, and among others to the cruelties of a savage foe, the most subtle and I take upon me to say the most formidable of any people upon the face of God’s Earth. And yet, actuated by the principles of true English liberty, they met all these hardships with pleasure, compared with those they suffered in their own country, from the hands of those who 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 over them, in one department and another, who were perhaps the deputies of deputies to some member of this House ¾ sent to spy out their liberty, 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 valour amidst their constant and laborious industry for the defense of a country, whose frontier, while drenched in blood, its interior parts have yielded all its little savings to your emolument. And believe me, remember I this day told you so, that same spirit of freedom which actuated that 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 motives of party heat, what I deliver are the genuine sentiments of my heart, however superior to me in general knowledge and experience the reputable 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 and I will say no more.[21]

No matter how spirited Barré’s speech, it didn’t prevent the passage of the bill in the Commons and by the following month it gained approval in the House of Lords. The Stamp Act would go into full effect in the colonies as of November 1.

Protests, boycotts against British goods, and violent outbursts erupted universally throughout the North American colonies. In Virginia the House of Burgesses published a list of resolutions arguing that only the Virginia General Assembly had the right to tax Virginians.[22] In Boston an angry mob set up an effigy of the appointed stamp master, which they later beheaded and set on fire. The mob then physically dismantled the stamp master’s home and destroyed his belongings.[23] In South Carolina the lieutenant governor deposited the stamps at Fort Johnson in Charleston. At midnight, a mob of one hundred fifty men crossed into the fort and, after relieving the single sentry still awake, seized control of the stamps. Anticipating an armed response, the men loaded cannons and took up armed positions around the fort.[24]

Hoping for a more significant impact, representatives from nine colonies gathered in New York to draft a formal protest on behalf of the full thirteen colonies who would unite in rebellion only a few years later. The Congress argued the legislation unconstitutional and impractical since not enough physical money existed to meet the tax’s demand.[25] And what money did exist already went toward British manufacturers to pay down debts accrued during war.[26] Fearing the overreach of Parliament, the Congress appealed directly to their King: “The invaluable right of taxing ourselves and trial by our peers, of which we implore your majesty’s protection, are not, we most humbly conceive, unconstitutional, but confirmed by the Great Charters of English liberties.”[27]

The protests added fuel to the voice of those in Parliament against the tax. During a January session of the House of Commons, William Pitt charged that the Stamp Act had been “founded on erroneous principle” and demanded an immediate repeal. But simultaneously the sovereignty of Parliament’s authority must be made clear. “we may bind their trade, confine their manufacturers, and exercise every power whatsoever – except that of taking their money without their consent.”[28]

Nearly two weeks later Pitt caused another disruption when the House debated bringing the Stamp Act Congress’s petition to the floor. According to Lt. Gen. Henry Seymour Conway in his report to the King, “Mr. Pitt had said some impudent things which I thought indispos’d the House much to the Petition: particularly he thought the Original Compact with the Americans was Broke, by the Stamp Act.”[29] Factional opponents objected loudly and the Attorney General called for a legal reprimand against Pitt.[30]

If King George III had a direct response regarding Pitt’s uproar, it went unrecorded. The young King understood the controversy the bill caused and how the colonies desired his direct intervention. But George III was a constitutionalist and did not believe in imposing himself on legislative matters belonging to Parliament. While Grenville’s faction argued for full enforcement of the act, Pitt’s argued for full repeal. Ultimately, the King desired whatever approach restored “order and obedience” between the colonies and the Kingdom:

I thought the modifying of the Stamp Act, the wisest & most efficacious manner of proceeding; 1st. because any part remaining sufficiently ascertain’d the Right of the Mother Country to tax its Colonys & next that it would shew a desire to redress any just grievances; but if the unhappy Factions that divided this Country would not permit this in my opinion equitable plant to be follow’d I thought Repealing infinitely more eligible than Enforcing, which could only tend to widen the breach between this Country & America.[31]

When Lord Rockingham, who replaced Grenville as First Lord of the Treasury the previous year, informed the King that the House of Commons decided to vote on the motion to either repeal or enforce the Stamp Act in its current state, the King said, “I immediately answer’d that in that case I was for the former.”[32] Rockingham requested the King’s permission to make his opinion known in the Commons and the King agreed. The House sided with the King and voted for repeal.[33]

Over the following days the House of Commons called key individuals forward to examine the colonial resistance to the Stamp Act and to understand the negative impact the colonial boycotts were having on British trade. Benjamin Franklin, Pennsylvania’s colonial agent residing in London, received a summons. His questioners pressed on the colonial perception of the rights of Parliament in levying taxes.

“You say the Colonies have always submitted to external taxes, and object to the right of parliament only in laying internal taxes; now can you shew that there is any kind of difference between the two taxes to the Colony on which they be laid?”[34]

Franklin argued there was a great difference.

An external tax is a duty laid on commodities imported; that duty is added to the first cost, and other charges on the commodity, and when it is offered to sale, makes a part of the price. If the people do not like it at that price, they refuse it; they are not obliged to pay it. But an internal tax is forced from the people without their consent, if not laid by their own representatives. The stamp-act says, we shall have no commerce, make no exchange of property with each other, neither purchase nor grant, nor recover debts; we shall neither marry, nor make wills, unless we pay such and such sums, and thus it is intended to extort our money from us, or ruin us by the consequences of refusing to pay it.[35]

Someone questioned if the use of military force would compel the Americans to comply with the unpopular law. “I do not see how a military force can be applied to that purpose,” said Franklin. “Suppose a military force sent into America, they find nobody in arms. What are they then to do? They cannot force a man to take stamps who chooses to do without them.” With prophetic warning he added, “They will not find a rebellion; they may indeed make one.”[36]

In the House of Commons, those who had pushed for enforcement of the Stamp Act still hoped to save it by proposing the bill be modified. When members learned that this is what the King had originally desired, they angrily accused Lord Rockingham of misrepresenting the King’s position by stating he desired repeal. When the Duke of Bedford reached out to the King offering his assistance with the hope that such a collaboration would ensure passage of the modification proposal, the King refused. “I do not think it Constitutional for the Crown personally to interfere in Measures which it has thought proper to refer to the advice of Parliament.”[37] Without assistance from the King, modification of the Stamp Act failed to pass. The following month, the House of Lords agreed with the Commons and gave their assent for repeal, ending the fight over the Stamp Act.[38]

The enactment or repeal of any bill required the royal assent of the King. On March 18, King George’s royal carriage set off toward Parliament to complete this final ceremonial step. But, as the London Gazette reported, a trip that normally took minutes was delayed by several hours due to excessive celebration throughout the city. The previous day, London merchants impacted by the colonial boycott sent ships toward North America carrying copies announcing the official end of the Stamp Act. Today vessels stood at the ready, set to launch so that trade with the colonies would resume without further delay.[39]

Celebrations erupted when news reached Boston in mid-May. “The Bells were immediately set a ringing, and the Cannon fired under the Liberty Tree and many other Parts of Town. Colours were displayed from the Merchants Vessels in the Harbour, and the Tops of many Houses.”[40] Festivities only grew louder by the morning: “the Dawn was ushered in by the Ringing of all the Bells in Town, Guns Firing, Drums Beating, and all Sorts of Musick.”[41] The Liberty Tree, which once stood as the symbolism for Patriotic defiance, now stood “decorated in a splendid Manner.”[42]

The New Hampshire Gazette recognized William Pitt for his aggressive defense of the colonial response: “Let PITT, the immortal PITT, receive our most unfeigned Thanks; that great and good Man, who, (tho’ amidst the most alluring Temptations) dar’d to be honest; may Posterity join the Records of the present Time, to continue his Name to the latest Generations, as the Patriot of America.”[43]

In a show of gratitude, New York commissioned London sculptor James Wilton to create statues of both William Pitt and King George III. When the statues arrived in Manhattan a few years later, grateful subjects set the King’s statue on a base at Bowling Green while the one of Pitt stood on Wall Street. For a while both impressed visitors to the city, but in the early years of the revolution, the statue of King George III was subjected to rebel anger when a mob pulled it away from its base and melted pieces of it into ammunition for the recently-started war.[44]

[1] James Henretta, “Salutary Neglect,” Encyclopedia Virginia, December 7, 2020, encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/salutary-neglect/.

[2] J.C. Long, George III: A Biography (London: Macdonald, 1960), 138-139.

[3] The Journals of the House of Commons, Vol. XXIX (London: Printed by Order of the House of Commons), 934.

[4] Ibid., 935.

[5] “Israel Mauduit’s Account of a Conference Between Mr. Grenville and The Several Colony Agents,” The Jenkinson Papers 1760-1766, ed. Ninetta S. Jucker (London: Macmillan & Co. Ltd., 1949), 306-307.

[6] “William and Mary, 1694: An Act for granting to theire Majesties severall Dutyes upon Velum Parchment and Paper for Four Yeares towards caryyng on the warr against France – [Chapter XXI. Rot. Parl. pt 5. nu. 1.],” British History Online, www.british-history.ac.uk/statutes-realm/vol6/pp495-502.

[7] The Acts and Resolves, Public and Private, of the Province of the Massachusetts Bay: To Which are Prefixed the Charters of the Provice with Historical and Explanatory Notes, and an Appendix, Volume III (Boston: Albert J. Wright, 1868), 793.

[8] “296 | Circular from the Earl of Halifax,” Colonial Society of Massachusetts, www.colonialsociety.org/node/3162#ch296.

[9] “Thomas Whatley to John Temple, August 14, 1764,” MHS Collections Online, www.masshist.org/database/viewer.php?item_id=697.

[10] “John Temple to Thomas Whatley, September 10, 1764,” in Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Sixth Series. Vol. IX (Boston: Published by the Society, 1897), 25.

[11] Ibid., 25-26.

[12] “Petition to the House of Commons,” in Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Sixth Series. Vol. IX (Boston: Published by the Society, 1897), 32.

[13] “Benjamin Hallowell to Charles Jenkinson, November 10, 1764,” The Jenkinson Papers, 340.

[14] “Debate, House of Commons. Committee of Ways and Means: Resolutions for Colonial Stamp Duties, February 6, 1765,” America in Class from the National Humanities Center, americainclass.org/sources/makingrevolution/crisis/text3/parliamentarydebate1765.pdf. .

[15] Ibid.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Ibid.

[19] Ibid.

[20] Ibid.

[21] Ibid.

[22] “The Virginia Stamp Act Resolutions – 1765,” UShistory.org, www.ushistory.org/declaration/related/vsa65.html.

[23] A.J. Langguth, Patriots: The Men Who Started the American Revolution (New York: Touchstone, 1988), 56.

[24] Chronicles of the American Revolution: Originally Compiled by Hezekiah Niles, ed, Alden Vaughan (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1965), 24-25.

[25] Ibid, 11.

[26] Ibid, 19.

[27] Ibid, 15.

[28] “Transcript For: Speech Against the Stamp Act,” Monticello Digital Classroom, classroom.monticello.org/view/74192/.

[29] “No. 216 – Lieut.-Gen. Conway to the King, January 28, 1766,” The Correspondence of King George the Third: From 1760 to December 1783, Volume I, ed. Sir John Fortescue (London: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd., 1967), 246.

[30] Ibid.

[31] “No. 248 – Memorandum by the King, February 11, 1766,” The Correspondence of King George the Third, 269.

[32] Ibid.

[33] “No. 243 – Lieut.-Gen. Conway to the King, February 7, 1766,” The Correspondence of King George the Third, 266.

[34] “Examination before the Committee of the Whole of the House of Commons, 13 February 1766,” founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-13-02-0035.

[35] Ibid.

[36] Ibid.

[37] “No. 256 – The King to the Duke of York, February 18, 1766,” The Correspondence of King George the Third, 273.

[38] “No. 258 – Lieut.-Gen. Conway to the King, February 22, 1766,” The Correspondence of King George the Third, 274.

[39] “Glorious News. Boston, Friday, 11 o’clock 16th May 1766,” MHS Collections Online, www.masshist.org/database/viewer.php?item_id=226.

[40] “Boston, May 19.,” The Boston-Gazette, and Country Journal, May 19, 1766.

[41] Ibid.

[42] Ibid.

[43] The New-Hampshire Gazette and historical chronicle (Portsmouth, NH), May 22, 1766.

[44] Wendy Bellion, “A Toppled Statue of George III Illuminates the Ongoing Debate Over America’s Monuments,” Smithsonian Magazine, January 28, 2022, www.smithsonianmag.com/history/a-toppled-statue-of-george-iii-epitomizes-the-ongoing-debate-over-americas-monuments-180979463/.