AMERICA:
1763-1776
Further Impositions:
The Quartering Act and the Townshend Duties
In August 1766, months after the repeal of the
Stamp Act, King George III dismissed the Rockingham government and chose
William Pitt as the new prime minister. Pitt opposed taxing the colonies, and
the colonists widely supported this move. However, Pitt became seriously ill
shortly after assuming office, and effective control of the government, and
colonial policy, passed to Charles Townshend, the chancellor of the exchequer
(treasurer). During this transition of power, tensions arose in New York in
regard to the 1765 Quartering Act. The Quartering Act required colonial
legislatures to pay for certain goods for soldiers stationed within their
borders. The goods were generally inexpensive, and the law only applied to
soldiers in settled areas, not on the frontier. Most colonies were not
dramatically affected by the payments, but New York, which had more soldiers
stationed within its boundaries than any other colony, was more greatly
burdened by the Quartering Act, and refused to comply with the law.
Townshend responded to this display of
opposition by drafting the New York Suspension Act, which would have nullified
any laws passed by New York's colonial legislature after October 1, 1767 unless
the assembly voted to pay for the troops' supplies. Aiming to head off future
trouble, the assembly caved.
Meanwhile, in Britain, elites were
continuously outraged over the high taxes they paid in order to support British
debt. In 1767, the elite landowners used their influence in the House of
Commons to cut their taxes by one-fourth, leaving the British treasury short
500,000 pounds compared to the previous year. Townshend proposed laws to tax
imports into the American colonies to make up for this lost revenue. Parliament
passed the Revenue Act of 1767 on July 2, 1767. Popularly referred to as the
Townshend duties, the Revenue Act taxed glass, lead, paint, paper, and tea
entering the colonies.
The Revenue Act never yielded as much income
as Townshend anticipated. Tea was the only major source of revenue, bringing in
20,000 pounds yearly, out of the total of 37,000 pounds the Revenue Act brought
in. This high revenue was only possible because the British had lowered the price
of British tea so that Americans would purchase it over less expensive smuggled
tea. To accomplish this, Parliament had eliminated 60,000 pounds of import fees
paid on British East Indian tea coming through Britain before being shipped out
to the colonies. Thus the net product of the Townshend duties was a 23,000
pound loss for the British territory. Though ineffective in raising revenue,
the Townshend duties proved remarkably effective in stirring up political
dissent that had lain dormant since the repeal of the Stamp Act.
Commentary
The colonists hailed the ascension of William
Pitt as the best thing that could have happened to British government, since
Pitt was the most respected English politician in America. Pitt, a friend of
the colonies, had the potential to steer Anglo-American relations off of the
disastrous course they had taken over the past several years. No one knows what
might have happened had he not fallen ill so soon. Townshend, in contrast to
Pitt, was no friend of the colonies and counted himself among those who were
concerned that the colonists were not pulling their weight as British subjects.
Townshend's colonial policy convinced the colonists that the Stamp Act had not
been an isolated mistake, but rather a small piece in a larger antagonistic
plan to undermine colonial efforts at self- governance.
Before New York revived the tension between
the colonies and the British government, the conflict had cooled dramatically.
However, New York's defiance of what its legislature saw as an indirect tax
refueled the cooling fires of anger and bitterness toward the American colonies
in the House of Commons. The drafting of the New York Suspension Act
demonstrated that British officials would not hesitate to defend parliamentary
power by usurping a colony's self- governance, a sobering thought for
colonists, which led them to begin to question the justice of British rule.
The Townshend duties called the justice of
British rule into even further question. During the Stamp Act crisis, the
colonists had made it clear that they objected to internal taxation, but had
said very little about taxing imports. Townshend interpreted this to mean that
the colonists would not object to any measure of external taxation. A now wiser
former Prime Minister George Grenville warned, "they will laugh at you for
your distinctions about regulations of trade," but Townshend did not heed
this warning, and proceeded with the Revenue Act.
In the past, the colonists had submitted to
external taxation as a legitimate regulatory measure. Even the Sugar Act had
received only limited opposition due to its tax measures, compared to more
serious complaints about impractical restrictions and the denial of a fair
trial for offenders. However, the Townshend duties differed from past legitimate
taxation in that past duties had been clearly protectionist in nature,
excluding foreign goods from the colonial market by raising their cost to
consumers. However, the Townshend duties set moderate duties that did not
exclude foreign goods, but simply raised their prices within the range of the
colonial market. The colonists deduced that the British government wanted the
colonists to continue purchasing these goods, thus raising revenue for the
British treasury at colonial expense. In this way, the Townshend duties could
be construed as taxes similar to those under the Stamp Act.
Townshend claimed that the Revenue Act was
intended to help solve the government's budgetary problems, but there were
additional ulterior motives for his support of the act. Townshend planned to
establish a fund through which to pay the salaries of the colonial royal
governors. Traditionally, royal governors had been paid by the colonial
assemblies, which thus exerted some measure of control over the actions of the
governor. By taking away this power, Townshend hoped to give the royal
governors the power to dominate colonial governments, yet another affront to
colonial self-government.
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