The law applied to wills, deeds, newspapers, pamphlets and even playing cards and dice. Specifically, the act required that, starting in the fall of 1765, legal documents and printed materials must bear a tax stamp provided by commissioned distributors who would collect the tax in exchange for the stamp. Instead of levying a duty on trade goods, the Stamp Act imposed a direct tax on the colonists. Stamp Act opponent Patrick Henry is known for his "Give me liberty, or give me death!" speech, delivered before a meeting of Virginia's colonial leaders in 1775 in an effort to mobilize a militia against a possible attack by the British. Shortly thereafter, George Grenville (1712-70), the British first lord of the treasury and prime minister, proposed the Stamp Act Parliament passed the act without debate in 1765. Starting with the Sugar Act of 1764, which imposed new duties on sugar and other goods, the British government began to tighten its reins on the colonies. In the first half of the 18th century, however, British enforcement of this system had been lax. ![]() ![]() Since the war benefited the American colonists (who had suffered 80 years of intermittent warfare with their French neighbors) as much as anyone else in the British Empire, the British government decided that those colonists should shoulder part of the war’s cost.īritain had long regulated colonial trade through a system of restrictions and duties on imports and exports. Victory in the war, however, had saddled the British Empire with a tremendous debt. The Seven Years’ War (1756-63) ended the long rivalry between France and Britain for control of North America, leaving Britain in possession of Canada and France without a footing on the continent.
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