Volume 3, Part 4, Edge of Revolution, The Stamp Act Crisis
Chapter 19, Passage of the Stamp Act
Upon introducing the American Revenue Act in Parliament in March 1764, George Grenville
strongly hinted that a stamp tax on the colonies might become necessary. He asked for postponement
Greenville tried to cover his tracks and assume a mask of benevolence by hinting to, but never officially informing, the Americans that he was willing to listen to alternative modes for the colonists to raise the money themselves, but preparations for a stamp tax proceeded apace, and the government was forced to change its policy.
We have already seen the leading role of Henry McCullough in drafting a proposed Stamp Act
in late 1763, and now Grenville assigned Thomas Watley, Secretary of the Treasury, the task
of drawing up the bill.
In this task, Watley was aided by McCullough.
Two, Grenville was particularly enchanted with the idea of a stamp tax.
It would be uniform throughout the colonies, affecting not only merchants in seaport towns
but farmers as well. Moreover, it would be, in a sense, self-executing, since instead
of search and seizure for contraband goods, every document and paper would require a specially
stamped paper the citizen would have to buy himself. As early as August 1764, the Earl
The Earl of Halifax, the powerful Secretary of State for the Southern Department, sent
a circular letter to all the colonial governors announcing the parliamentary resolution for
a potential stamp tax and asking for a list of instrumentalities and transactions that
might require a stamp.
On the basis of the replies, Watley prepared a detailed list of stamp duties, and the list
was approved by the Treasury Board in mid-December. The die for a stamp tax had been cast. Most
of the proposed rates were lower than those of the English stamp tax, since the rates
could later be raised after the Americans had become accustomed to the tax. But the
The taxes on entry into college and to the bar were far higher than in England. The taxes
for matriculation and college degrees were set at two pounds in America, but two shillings
in England. For entry to the bar, ten pounds in America and six pounds in England.
Watley's reason for setting such high rates in America was brutally frank. It would be
Maybe better indeed if they were raised considerably in order to keep mean persons out of those
situations in life which they disgrace.
While these preparations were secretly underway, the colonies did their best to explore Grenville's
hint that he would forgo a stamp tax if the colonists were willing to raise an equivalent
sum themselves.
But when Grenville met with the colonial agents in mid-May 1764, he pushed aside the crucial
question of how much he wanted the colonies to pay to England.
Dismissing the possibility of self-taxation, he proposed instead that they simply give
their advance approval to the stamp tax.
So much for the sincerity of the Grenville offer.
An Israel Moduit representing Massachusetts gently asked how the colonies could possibly
give advance approval to a bill they knew virtually nothing about.
Grenville answered that the details were unimportant since the bill was to follow the model of
the stamp tax in England.
It was clear that Grenville was interested only in securing an advance blank check from
from the Colonies, and not in soliciting any colonial criticism of his plan. Yet the bemused
colonial agents could not bring themselves to face the iniquity of George Grenville,
and they clung to the hope that his hinted offer had been genuine. The Boston members
of the Massachusetts Assembly asked Governor Bernard for special session to forestall an
and English Stamp Tax by Imposing One Themselves.
Bernard realized that no such alternative tax could be enacted until the Crown decided
how much it wanted the colonies to pay, a disclosure it kept refusing to make.
In fact, many of the colonies, including Franklin Galloway-dominated Pennsylvania, signified
and a willingness to tax themselves any sum that might be requested.
But the Crown, of course, never bothered to make such a request.
Grenville's state of mind, at this point, has been acutely summed up by the Morgans.
It is evident that Grenville was determined upon a stamp tax.
Though he was willing to make magnanimous gestures, he had no intention of allowing
in the colonies to prevent passage of his measure. They would not thwart him by levying
a substitute tax themselves. By withholding the necessary information, he made sure of
that. Nor would he be troubled by the objections. Thanks to his foresighted resolution, he could
safely predict Parliament's unsympathetic reaction here.
Greenville must have felt comfortably satisfied with all his maneuvers. He made it useless
for the colonies to attempt any action to avert the tax, and yet he had carried out
his interviews so smoothly and expressed his affection for the colonies so convincingly
that the agents did not perceive the hopelessness of their efforts.
In addition to a few pathetic offers to appease Grenville by offering to tax themselves, many
colonies sent protest against any projected stamp tax along with their reactions to the
Sugar Act.
The Connecticut Resolution of May-June 1764, selecting a committee of protest, singled
out a stamp tax as the gravest threat on the horizon.
The South Carolina House's instruction of protests in August against the American Revenue
Act singled out a stamp tax for special hostility. And the Rhode Island Legislature's protest
of November was confined to stamp duties and other internal taxes. Colonial protests, general
and specific, against a stamp tax came not only from official bodies, but from private
sources as well. Jared Ingersoll, an influential Tory lawyer from Connecticut, and one of
that province's agents to England, warned Watley in the summer of 1764 that the people
were filled with the most dreadful apprehension over any stamp tax. Ingersoll warned of the
great difficulty that would be met in collecting a tax that was, in the opinion of most of
The People Contrary to the Foundation Principles of their Natural and Constitutional Rights
and Liberties. Even some of the wealthiest citizens, he added, threatened to emigrate
in the event of such attacks. The other colonial agents joined in the advance agitation, but
the protest only succeeded in hardening the Crown's determination to put the annoying
Colonies in their supposedly appointed place. The agitation also made it easier to appeal
to Parliament's sensitivity to its own power and right to impose such a tax.
By early 1765, the year of grace was over. The colonist had presumably had time to absorb
the shock, and the crown was set to ram the hated stamp tax down the throats of the colonies.
A last-minute attempt to head off the stamp bill occurred on February 2nd at a conference
between four official and unofficial colonial agents and George Grenville.
The four agents, Charles Garth, MP, agent for South Carolina, Richard Jackson, now agent
of Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, Benjamin Franklin and Ingersoll, made a final
Granville tried at appeasement by offering a self-imposed tax by the colonies.
Jackson voiced a common and perceptive colonial fear that the Crown would be able to use colonial
funds to support its armed forces and the royal governors in America, and thus free
the governors from the assembly control so precious to the colonies.
Frankl replied with the same hocus-pocus in Double Talk of the year before, now revealed
as patently insincere.
But Benjamin Franklin proved indomitable in his determination to toady to the crown.
Franklin had three alternative plans of his own devising to offer, each of which would
would have yielded to the principle of English taxation of the colonies, and each of which
would also have aggrandized central imperial control at the expense of American home rule.
One was a cute way to make a mockery of the principle of colonial self-taxation, to provide
some colonial representation in Parliament. A second was to return to his imperialist
in Centralizing Albany Plan of 1754, which would have imposed a royally appointed American
Council to levy taxation on the colonies. A third plan, which Franklin strongly urged,
called on Parliament to establish a single loan office in America to issue a common colonial
paper currency, part of which would go to Britain as a hidden and therefore less provocative
form of taxation on the colonies. In that way, centralization and imperial control in
America could make giant strides. Paper money inflation would recover nicely from the hard
blow of Parliament's rather restrictive currency act of the previous year. And Franklin, if
If luck went his way, would have a healthy share in the lucrative contract for printing
the new paper issues. Indeed, Franklin persuaded his old friend, former Governor Thomas Pownall
of Massachusetts, to propose the plan and to present it jointly with him to Grenville.
Pownall and Franklin also eagerly offered their services in the well-paying task of
Thomas Pownall incorporated Franklin's proposal into the second edition of his influential
book, The Administration of the Colonies, originally published in 1764.
In view of Pownall's close collaboration with Franklin, it is instructive to note the views
expressed in Pownall's work on imperial-colonial relations.
The people's crucial objective was to reimpose imperial control by making the governors and
other crown officials independent of the elected assemblies for their salaries.
Without such independence, the officials' actions would remain subservient to the people
of the colonies.
The means to accomplish this end would be the levying of a British tax on the colonies,
Which tax could then be used to pay the salaries of the Crown officials? In that way the American
colonists themselves would be forced to pay for the subversion of their own rights by
the British rulers. A neat trick indeed.
But Grenville scorned evasions and halfway measures. Sure of victory in Parliament and
and anxious to smash signs of self-reliance in the colonies, Grenville finally introduced
a stamp bill into Parliament on February 6, 1765.
Opposition to the bill in the Commons was mobilized by the hardcore Whigs.
The Whigs did their best, but were demoralized by the recent death of their leader, the Duke
by the Duke of Devonshire and by one of the periodic bouts of insanity of William Pitt, who held the narrow view that Parliament should not impose internal taxation on the colonies.
The early opposition was led by Alderman William Beckford from the City of London, who alone and courageously denied the right of Parliament to tax the colonies.
The others were content, doubtless for strategic reasons if no other, to deny the equity and expediency of the tax.
The most eloquent and famous speech was delivered by the old Wilkite, Colonel Isaac Barre.
Barre had advocated no tax, or, if a tax, at least the opportunity for the colonies to tax themselves.
He had been answered by the renegade Whig, Charles Townsend, who loftily and arrogantly
asked, And now will those American children, planted by our care, nourished by our indulgence
until they are grown to a degree of strength and opulence and protected by our arms, will
they grudge to contribute their might to relieve us from the heavy burden?
The IRA now rose and spontaneously gave a superb and prophetic rebuttal, one soon to
resound throughout the American colonies.
They planted by your care?
No, your oppression planted them in America.
They fled from your tyranny to a then uncultivated and unhospitable country where they exposed
to almost all the hardships to which human nature is liable. Actuated by 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 by your indulgence. They grew by your neglect of them. As soon as you began to care about them,
That was exercised in sending persons to rule over them in one department and another, sent
to spy out their liberty, to misrepresent their actions and to prey upon them, men whose
behaviour on many occasions has caused the blood of those sons of liberty to recoil within
them.
They, protected by your arms?
They have nobly taken up arms in your defense, have exerted a valor 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. 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.
Beckford and Barré moved to block consideration of the bill, but were defeated by a vote of
The bill itself came to debate in mid-February, as several Whigs tried desperately to present petitions against the stamp tax.
Rose Fuller, a West Indies merchant, presented a petition of London merchants reflecting their alarm at drastic action that might be taken by their American debtors.
and Debtors. Charles Garth, the agent for South Carolina, worked up a petition that
he had induced a few South Carolinians to sign. Richard Jackson presented a Connecticut
petition, but Parliament refused to hear any of them on the ground that the petitions questioned
Parliament's authority. No one dared to introduce the New York petition, which was deemed dangerous
Dangerous and Inflammatory, but the petition of Virginia's agent was submitted by a leading
Whig, Sir William Meredith. Virginia's right to petition was defended by General Henry
Seymour Conway, a Wilkite and the Whig leader in Commons, who had been one of the main Pelham
innocents massacred at the end of 1762. Conway was the brother of the influential Lord Hurtford
Conway recalled that the colonies had been asked by Grenville to submit their proposals,
and then he proceeded to deny the right of Parliament to tax the colonies at all.
But Parliament, led by the renegade Whig, Charles York, rejected the Virginia petition
by a large majority.
The rest was mere formality.
The Stamp Bill easily passed Commons on February 27, the House of Lords on March 8, and became
the law of the land on November 1.
The Stamp Act imposed a comprehensive schedule of taxes on all manner of colonial, legal
and commercial documents and transactions.
These included court actions, wills, contracts, licenses, leases, deeds and land grants, mortgages,
insurance policies, ship clearings from ports, pamphlets, newspapers, dice and playing cards.
The highest tax was ten pounds for a license to practice law.
Also extremely high was the tax of two shillings apiece for all newspaper advertisements, often
amounting to a huge 200% tax. In addition, a steep tax of one-half penny was levied on
each copy of the newspaper itself. All payments had to be made in English sterling or its
The corollary effect of this was to give the board a monopoly of the sale of all paper
in the colonies.
The Stamp Act thus had a devastating impact on virtually the entire economic and social
life of the colony, in short, on nearly everyone.
No tax could have been better calculated to inflame nearly everyone in the colonies regardless
of location or social position.
The particularly heavy taxes on the legal and the newspaper professions as well as the
taxes on tavern licenses were certain to mobilize the intense opposition of the most articulate
opinion molding groups in the colonies.
Benjamin Franklin was alarmed, being sure that the new taxes would destroy half the
circulation and advertising of the American newspaper. There were other ominous provisions
in the act. For one thing, no newspaper or pamphlet could be published without bearing
the name of the printer or author, obviously in order to intimidate critics of government
by forcing them to publicize their names. In another area, the Stamp Act imposed taxes
on Documents in Ecclesiastical Courts. The specter of an ecclesiastical court presided
over by an Anglican bishop was thus conjured up to arouse the colonies. The penalties were
severe. Unstamped evidence was inadmissible in any court. Violations could be tried in
the colonial admiralty courts without trial by jury, and especially subject to prosecution
The vice-admuty courts, hitherto largely the concern of merchants, were now hated by all groups in America, whereas the navigation and the
by all groups in America. Whereas the navigation and sugar acts could conceivably, if torturously,
be interpreted as dealing with the sea, and therefore relating to admulty courts, the
stamp tax obviously could not. Thus constitutional and economic questions, violations of political
and perhaps religious rights and economic prosperity all merged in the Stamp Act into one comprehensive
and massive assault on the liberty, property, and well-being of the colonist in America.
Great Britain had smashed at America with a mailed fist. The die was cast. The colonists
were faced with a fateful choice, abject submission or open resistance.