To protest taxes, patriots often vandalized stores selling British goods and intimidated store merchants and their customers. Skirmishes between patriot colonists and British soldiers-as well as colonists loyal to the British Crown-became increasingly common. Repeal of the Townshend Actsīy 1769, more than 2,000 British troops had arrived in Boston to restore order-a large number considering only about 16,000 people lived in Boston at the time. In response to protests and boycotts, the British sent troops to occupy Boston and quell the unrest. New York followed suit in April, with an even more restrictive non-importation agreement. With the exception of necessities, such as fishing hooks and wire, New England merchants agreed not to import British goods for one year. With the help of the Sons of Liberty-a secret society of American business leaders who coined the phrase “taxation without representation”-24 towns in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island agreed to boycott British goods in January 1768. and passed by the Massachusetts House of Representatives to other colonial legislatures. These influential pamphlets included “Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania,” a series of essays written by Pennsylvania legislator John Dickinson and the “Massachusetts Circular Letter,” a statement written by Samuel Adams and James Otis Jr. By December, two widely circulated documents had united colonists in favor of a boycott of British goods. The Townshend duties went into effect on November 20, 1767, close on the heels of the Declaratory Act of 1766, which stated that British Parliament had the same authority to tax the American colonies as they did in Great Britain. He died suddenly in September 1767, before the detrimental effects of his signature rules could materialize. However, these policies prompted colonists to take action by boycotting British goods.Ĭharles Townshend didn’t live to see the measures enacted. The Townshend Acts would use the revenue raised by the duties to pay the salaries of colonial governors and judges, ensuring the loyalty of America’s governmental officials to the British Crown. While the original intent of the import duties had been to raise revenue, Charles Townshend saw the policies as a way to remodel colonial governments. Early attempts, such as the Stamp Act of 1765-which taxed colonists for every piece of paper they used-were met with widespread protests in America. The British Parliament enacted a series of taxes on the colonies for the purpose of raising revenue. The British government thought the colonists should help pay the cost of their protection. The colonists-who arguably enjoyed a higher standard of living at the time than their British counterparts-paid less than one-twentieth the taxes of British citizens living in England. The British Crown emerged victorious from the French and Indian War in 1763, but defending the North American colonies from French expansion had proved tremendously costly to England.Ĭompared to Great Britain’s debts, the cost of the French and Indian War to the colonists had been slight. The British sent troops to America to enforce the unpopular new laws, further heightening tensions between Great Britain and the American colonies in the run-up to the American Revolutionary War. But American colonists, who had no representation in Parliament, saw the Acts as an abuse of power. The Townshend Acts were a series of measures, passed by the British Parliament in 1767, that taxed goods imported to the American colonies.
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