American Democracy in Context. Joseph A. PikaЧитать онлайн книгу.
rising up against Charles I, Parliament invoked the Magna Carta and argued that the king was violating the rights of individuals. For example, opponents of the king argued that if he could tax without the consent of Parliament, then the English people and Parliament, their representative assembly, were in a state of servitude to the king. As we will see, concern about taxation without representation later became a key issue in the road to revolution in the American colonies.
The decades that followed were rocky times in England. Charles I was eventually beheaded. When his son, Charles II, tried to succeed him, another civil war ensued. Charles II fled to France, and Parliament declared England a “free state,” to be governed as a commonwealth without a king. That commonwealth lasted from 1651 until 1659. Charles II returned to England and was restored to the throne in 1660. King Charles II was now careful not to oppose Parliament, but his brother, James II, who succeeded him in 1685, tried to reassert the divine right of kings and to rule without Parliament. As a result, he was run out of the country in what became known as the Glorious Revolution of 1688.
The action of James II led Parliament to enact the English Bill of Rights, a statute that spelled out the basic rights of Englishmen and limited the power of future monarchs. Among other things, the Bill of Rights declared freedom from taxation by royal prerogative: Only Parliament, the representative of the people, could impose taxes. Together, the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights were considered to be part of the country’s “unwritten” constitution, which came to be seen by British citizens as containing fundamental, inviolable principles.
“No Taxation Without Representation”
Some things never change: People hate taxes—or, at least, taxes that seem excessive or otherwise unfair. The colonists seethed at taxes imposed on them by Parliament because they considered them not only unfair but a flagrant violation of parliamentary power. Since the colonists had no elected representatives in Parliament, they believed that these taxes violated a fundamental principle of the English Bill of Rights: no taxation without representation. The Bill of Rights declared freedom from taxation by royal prerogative and instead gave Parliament the power to tax because that body represented the people. Anger over taxation without representation is, in no small measure, what led to the American Revolution.
The Sugar Act and Stamp Act
The first seeds of revolution were planted in 1764 when Parliament enacted the American Revenue Act, better known as the Sugar Act. People in England had been complaining of too many taxes, and so Parliament used the act to shift some of the tax burden to the American colonists. The Sugar Act imposed duties on certain foreign goods imported into the American colonies—sugar and other goods, including coffee, some wines, and pimiento.
The timing could not have been worse, as the colonies were facing a bad economy. Not only did the new duties on imported goods increase prices for the colonists, but they also hurt American manufacturers of rum by making ingredients more expensive. As a result, the American rum trade was threatened to be priced out of the market; foreign buyers who had previously imported American rum now turned to other sources. Colonists reacted harshly to the Sugar Act. They quickly took up the rallying cry of “no taxation without representation.” The Massachusetts assembly proclaimed that the act deprived the colonists of “the most essential Rights of Britons.”6
Parliament made matters even worse for the colonists by imposing the Stamp Act the following March. From 1756 to 1763, the British had fought the French and Indian War in Canada and on the western frontier of the colonies; these battles were part of a larger struggle among a number of countries that transpired in Europe and elsewhere. British victory in the French and Indian War had left the country deep in debt, and the Stamp Act was an attempt by Parliament to raise money, ostensibly to pay for Britain’s continued military presence in North America after the war. The act imposed a direct tax on a wide array of printed materials in the colonies, including everything from legal documents to newspapers to playing cards. Such materials had to either be printed on specially marked paper or have tax stamps affixed to them to indicate that the tax had been paid.
American newspapers bitterly opposed the Stamp Act. The Pennsylvania Journal showed its displeasure by marking the location where the stamp would be placed with a skull and crossbones in its October 24, 1765 edition.
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The Stamp Act galvanized the colonies. Several colonial assemblies adopted resolutions denouncing the tax. The first and most famous was a series of resolutions passed by the Virginia House of Burgesses on May 29, 1765. These Virginia Stamp Act Resolutions (also known as the “Virginia Resolves”) stated that “the taxation of the people by themselves, or by persons chosen by themselves to represent them, … is the distinguishing characteristic of British freedom.”7 In so doing, the Virginia Resolves invoked the spirit of the Magna Carta and the English Bill of Rights.
Stamp Act Congress The first national meeting of representatives from the colonies in 1765. In response to duties (taxes) imposed by Parliament on the colonies through the Stamp Act, this Congress passed a Declaration of Rights that denounced taxation without representation—an important step toward the American Revolution.
The Stamp Act also provoked representatives from nine of the thirteen colonies to gather at Federal Hall in New York in October 1765.8 This so-called Stamp Act Congress was the first official meeting of representatives from the various colonies, and it resulted in a Declaration of Rights. The declaration rejected the claim by the British Prime Minister, George Grenville, that as British subjects, the colonists enjoyed “virtual representation” in Parliament even if they did not formally elect representatives to Parliament. In direct defiance of Grenville, the declaration made it clear that “the only representatives of these colonies are persons chosen therein,” adding that “no taxes can be constitutionally imposed on [the colonies] but by their respective legislatures.”9
Representative bodies were not the only ones motivated by the Stamp Act to take action. Throughout the colonies, individuals formed associations known as the Sons of Liberty to attack British authority and resist taxation without representation by whatever means necessary. In some places, violent protests erupted. Those who distributed the hated stamps on behalf of the British government were hung in effigy, and in some cases, their homes were attacked. Defiant colonists refused to use the stamps and boycotted British goods.
The British Response
The reaction of the colonists to the Stamp Act alarmed the British, and in February 1766, Parliament repealed the act. But, in March, it also passed the Declaratory Act, stating that colonial bodies had “against law” claimed “the sole and exclusive right of imposing duties and taxes” in the colonies. Noting that “all [colonial] resolutions, votes, orders, and proceedings” that denied Parliament’s power to tax (including the Virginia Resolves and the Stamp Act Congress’s Declaration of Rights) were “utterly null and void,” the act reiterated that the colonies were “subordinate unto, and dependent upon the imperial crown and Parliament of Great Britain.”10
Then Parliament enacted the Revenue Act of 1767, the first of the so-called Townshend Acts, named after Charles Townshend, the chancellor of exchequer (treasury), who advocated them. Whereas the Stamp Act was a direct tax on goods in the colonies, the Revenue Act (similar to the earlier Sugar Act) was an indirect tax that placed duties on imported goods, including the paper, paint, glass, and tea the colonies imported from England. Townshend assumed that indirect taxes would be more palatable to the colonists than direct taxes, but he was wrong. The Massachusetts House of Representatives reiterated the now-familiar protest: no taxation without representation.
This time, Britain’s response was harsh. It ordered the royal governor to dissolve the Massachusetts legislature. Soon thereafter, it sent regiments of British troops to