* Required a stamp duty on all paper goods, including newspapers, pamphlets, legal documents, and playing cards. This was a direct tax on the colonists, and they resented having to pay taxes to the British government without having any representation in Parliament.
* Colonists argued that the Stamp Act violated their rights as English subjects. They believed that they had the right to be taxed only by their own elected representatives.
* The Stamp Act sparked widespread protests and demonstrations throughout the colonies. In some cases, these protests turned violent, and British troops were called in to restore order.
The Townshend Acts (1767)
* Imposed new duties on a variety of imported goods, including glass, paper, tea, and lead. These duties were meant to raise revenue to pay for the British troops that were stationed in the colonies.
* Colonists again protested the Townshend Acts, arguing that they were being taxed without representation.
* The Townshend Acts also led to a decline in trade between the colonies and Britain. This hurt the colonial economy and further angered the colonists.
The Tea Act (1773)
* Granted the British East India Company a monopoly on the sale of tea in the colonies.
* Colonists were outraged by the Tea Act, seeing it as another attempt by the British government to tax them without their consent.
* The Boston Tea Party, in which colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians dumped a shipment of tea into Boston Harbor, was the culmination of colonial opposition to the Tea Act.
Colonial Responses:
* The resistance to these taxes helped unite the colonies against British rule and eventually led to the American Revolution.
* Colonists organized boycotts of British goods, held protest meetings, and petitioned the British government to repeal the taxes.
* Colonial protests to the taxes passed by the British Parliament were based on the belief that only local representative governments had the right to levy taxes in the American colonies.
* In retaliation, Parliament passed the Coercive Acts, also known as the Intolerable Acts, restricting civil liberties of colonist in Massachusetts after the Boston Tea Party.