The most influential colonial objection to the Townshend Acts came in twelve essays by John Dickinson entitled “Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania.” Published starting in December 1767, Dickinson’s essays urged colonists to resist paying the British taxes.
[7] Parliament provided its answer to this question when it repealed the Stamp Act in 1766 by simultaneously passing the Declaratory Act, which proclaimed that Parliament could legislate for the colonies "in all cases whatsoever". In Britain, Colonial Secretary Lord Hillsborough threatened to dissolve the colonial assemblies if they supported the Massachusetts petition. [9], This was the second of the five acts, passed on June 26, 1767. 59.
With John Adams serving as his lawyer, Hancock was prosecuted in a highly publicized trial by a vice-admiralty court, but the charges were eventually dropped.
[49] Townshend did not live to see this reaction, having died suddenly on September 4, 1767. [33] According to historian Peter Thomas, Townshend's "aims were political rather than financial". To that end, the acts had their greatest impact in 1768, when combined taxes collected from the colonies totaled £13,202 (British pounds)—the inflation-adjusted equivalent of about £2,177,200, or about $2,649,980 (U.S. dollars) in 2019. The Townshend duties went into effect on November 20, 1767, close on the heels of the... Repeal of the Townshend Acts. [77], On the 5th of March 1770— the same day as the Boston Massacre although news traveled slowly at the time, and neither side of the Atlantic were aware of this coincidence—Lord North, the new Prime Minister, presented a motion in the House of Commons that called for partial repeal of the Townshend Revenue Act. [6] This issue, only briefly debated following the Sugar Act, became a major point of contention after Parliament's passage of the Stamp Act 1765. The, This page was last edited on 17 September 2020, at 16:57. Since tea smuggling had become a common and successful practice, Parliament realized how difficult it was to enforce the taxing of tea. The Assembly avoided conceding the right of Parliament to tax the colonies by making no reference to the Quartering Act when appropriating this money; they also passed a resolution stating that Parliament could not constitutionally suspend an elected legislature.
It lowered commercial duties on tea imported to England by the East India Company and gave the company a refund of the duty for tea that was then exported to the colonies. He also sent a letter to Massachusetts Governor Francis Bernard, instructing him to have the Massachusetts House rescind the Circular Letter. American resentment, corrupt British officials, and abusive enforcement spurred colonial attacks on British ships, including the burning of the Gaspee in 1772.