On the law that
helped prompt the Revolution—and foreshadowed our continuing complex
relationship to taxation.
In March of 1765,
dealing with the lingering aftermath of the French and
Indian War and the resulting need to station a standing army (of 10,000
soldiers) on America’s western frontier, as well as with colonies that had begun
to resist their royally appointed governors and leaders in various small but
telling ways, the British Parliament passed the Stamp Act. The
law required all colonists to pay a small tax on every piece of printed paper
used (for any activity), and represented, at least as the colonists’ generally perceived
it, the first tax created for the specific and sole purpose of raising money
for the Crown. It thus also appeared to be an attempt to circumvent the
authority of the various colonial legislatures, which had their own mechanisms
in place for raising and spending revenues.
The Act itself
thus served as a direct precursor to many of the issues that would animate the
Revolutionary events (the
Boston Tea Party, for example) and rhetoric (the list of grievances in the Declaration
of Independence). One particular moment in its aftermath, however, served
as an indirect but even more telling step in the path toward those historic
events. Led by the newly elected young firebrand Patrick Henry,
the Virginia House of Burgesses adopted the Stamp Act
Resolutions, protesting the Act and establishing the colonial legislature’s
sole right to levy taxes on its own citizens. However, Virginia’s acting royal
governor, Francis
Fauquier, refused to sign the Resolutions, and instead dissolved the House
of Burgesses. Patrick Henry did not deliver his famous “Give me
liberty, or give me death!” line for another decade, but the 1765 events
and confrontation indicate just how fully he, Virginia, and the colonies were
on their way toward such moments.
Henry’s
Resolutions, and the overall response to laws such as the Stamp Act, also comprise
potential origin points for one of our more complex enduring national
attitudes. This is purely interpretative, and if there are statistics related
to this question I haven’t seen them, but it seems to me that Americans are far
more accepting of local and state taxes than of federal ones (such as the
income tax, about which more later this week). Obviously we like to grumble
about property taxes, or automobile excises, or sales tax, but I’m not aware of
any organized protests against those taxes, along the lines of the kinds of Tax
Day events that have long been a part of American political life and have
become even more prominent in the era
of the Tea Party. There would be various ways to interpret that trend, if
it is indeed accurate, but one would hearken back directly to Patrick Henry,
and the idea that taxes which come from close proximity to us are somehow more
tolerable than ones levied from a centralized government.
Next taxing
topic tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think?
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