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The Stamp Act

© Brian Tubbs

Led by radicals such as Samuel Adams and James Otis, opposition to the Sugar Act was significant, but limited. In fact, there were many indications such opposition was fading. But Prime Minister George Grenville breathed new life into the protest movement, when he introduced the Stamp Act.

Grenville had already signaled such a tax was on the horizon. He had pointedly referred to it, when he submitted the Revenue Act to Parliament in 1764. At the time, there was little protest. England was too preoccupied with its own troubles to speculate as to what colonial reaction might be to such a suggested means of raising much-needed revenue. Soon, however, no speculation would be required. The colonies would register their opinion of British taxation, and they would do so loudly.

Protest of the Stamp Act began with the colonial agents in London, among them the world-renowned Renaissance Man: Benjamin Franklin. In a meeting with Prime Minister Grenville before the Stamp Act was officially approved by Parliament, Franklin and the other colonial representatives pushed for the government to reconsider its plans. While Grenville had for all intents and purposes made up his mind, he nonetheless expressed a willingness to entertain an alternative solution – a tax that the colonial assemblies could place upon themselves to help defray England’s debt as well as the costs for keeping a presence in North America. In fact, such an offer was most likely a public relations ploy. The agents were in no position, on the eve of Parliament’s vote, to submit an alternative plan that would satisfy Parliament and, at the same time, obtain the consent of all the various colonial legislatures in North America. Grenville had them in a corner, and they predictably declined his offer.

Franklin, however, floated a suggestion of his own. What if Parliament re-authorized the printing of paper currency in North America, but with interest? According to Franklin, charging interest on colonial paper currency would “operate as a general tax on the colonies, and yet not an unpleasing one, as he who actually pays the interest has an equivalent or more in the use of the principal.” By this scheme, Franklin argued “the rich…would pay most of the tax.” Grenville refused to entertain the idea, and proceeded to introduce the Stamp Act to a fairly receptive Parliament.

Dismissing the concerns of the colonial agents (which amounted to most of the negative input Parliament had thus far received for Grenville’s idea), Charles Townshend gave a bold and sarcastic defense of England’s right to tax the colonies in the same manner in which her own citizens were being taxed. “Will these Americans, children planted by our care, nourished up 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 mite to relieve us from the heavy weight of that burden which we lie under?”