Taxes

[ccpender]

Trying to recover the cost of the Seven Years’ War, the British Empire chose to issue Acts to tax the colonists. These acts caused severe problems for colonists who depended on trade. Angry with the trade disruptions, colonists began organizing to protest. The first formal protest was in 1764 when assemblies of eight colonies sent petitions to royal authorities claiming that the Sugar Act was causing economic injury (pg. 28). The colonial protests were essentially ignored; this set the stage for violence, protests, boycotts and a changing of mindset in the sovereignty of the colonies (pg. 38-44).

[dwhannah]

Due to the British Empires need for monies, and the overwhelmed amount of taxes that Great Britain citizens were paying the parliament looked to its colonies to support their ill fated positions. In 1764, during a time of great financial stress, Parliament passed Currency Act which forbade the colonist from printing paper money as legal tender (27). With the enactment of the Sugar Act as well as the Stamp Act, Colonist felt an overwhelming resentment for Parliament’s disregard for the petitions of the American Colonists. These specific acts of Parliament left the Colonist enflamed that they were being treated in such a manner. It was in 1765, 37 delegates met in New York in the Stamp Act Congress that they declared these acts unconstitutional. Although diplomatic means were being used to put an end to these Acts, it was ultimately violence that ended the Stamp Act(29). The Acts were the catalyst to the Revolution—Colonist no longer felt that Parliament had a right to make decisions for the Colonist. They were only tied to each other through the King.

[nicolesmith]

Taxes that were put into place by the Stamp Act, Sugar Act, and the Townshend Act caused many problems and fears with the colonists ultimately leading to the Revolution. One of their biggest fears was that the taxes would destroy the rum industry because of the taxes now being put on foreign molasses. If the rum industry was ruined, it would also lead to destruction among the trades of fish, food, and eventually slavery. “These fears together with the hostility to all the new trade regulations accompanying the Sugar Act, stirred up opposition and provoked the first deliberately organized intercolonial protest,” (pg. 28). When Americans got word that Parliament had passed the Stamp Act without including the colonists opinions, the colonists began to react angrily. This torrent of angry words could not help but bring the constitutional relationship between Britain and its colonies into question. “In February 1768 the Massachusetts House of Representatives issued to the other colonial legislatures a “circular Letter” that denounced the Townshend duties as unconstitutional violations of the principle of no taxation without representation,” (pg. 33).