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The Townsend Acts of
1767 “The Townsend Duties Crisis was never resolved. It culminated in the Boston Tea Party, that triggered off the final sequence of events leading to the War of American Independence.” —Peter D.G. Thomas, The Townsend Duties Crisis |
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In
1767 the newly appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer, Charles Townsend,
sought to remedy England’s mounting financial woes by introducing what
are referred to as the Townsend Acts, comprising the Revenue Act, the
Suspension of the New York Assembly Act, and the Board of Customs Act.
Townsend believed these Acts would raise revenues from the
colonies without re-igniting the rebelliousness and widespread unrest
that had followed the Stamp Act. In
his mind, the colonists chief objection to the Stamp Act was that it had
been an ‘internal’ tax—i.e., a tax on goods manufactured within
the colonies. Townsend’s
Revenue Act, therefore, taxed goods produced outside the colonies such
as paint, tea, coffee and cocoa. The plan was an utter failure: “As the new colonial duties
came hard on the heels of a reduction of the land tax in England, the
constitutional controversy over taxation was re-opened in an acute form.
Americans could point out that as taxes were reduced on English
taxpayers, they were increased on the colonists”
(Dickerson, The Navigation Acts and the American Revolution).
In addition, the duties were to be paid in British pounds, which only
exacerbated the already severe strain on the colonial economy caused by
the Currency Act of 1764. However, the political purpose of the Revenue Act was even
more significant than its adverse economic effects: “The proceeds of
the Act were to be set aside to pay the salaries of governors, judges,
and other royal officials, and thus to render them independent of
colonial legislatures. The
purpose was clear, and every colonial leader recognized it”
(English Historical Documents, pp. 700).
This raised a serious constitutional issue, as the colonial
legislatures no longer had control over the salaries of colonial
officials. |
| The
Act Suspending the New York Assembly (above) was designed to
alleviate the burden of maintaining Royal troops in the colonies by
suspending the New York Assembly until New York complied fully with the
Quartering Act of 1765. The
colonists did not take well to the idea of Parliament suspending their
right to exercise self-government.
Thomas Jefferson’s singularly articulate outrage tells of how
the colonists viewed this Act: “One free and independent legislature
hereby takes upon itself to suspend the powers of another, free and
independent as itself...The common feelings of human nature must be
surrendered up before his majesty’s subjects here can be persuaded to
believe that they hold their political existence at the will of a
British Parliament.” The
American Board of Customs Act of 1767 established a Board of Customs
Commission in Boston to enforce the duties imposed by the Revenue Act.
The customs officers operated largely outside of the colonial
legal system, and the abuses were widespread and greatly damaged
relations between American seamen and the Royal officers:
“The new Board of Customs Commission devoted its energies to
waging war upon ships, seamen, merchants, and commerce in the interest
of revenue; multiplying oficers and employees for this purpose;
inaugurating a new and rapacious coast guard service manned by
unprincipled individuals interested chiefly in personal plunder. This new coast guard service behaved like pirates and was
soon at open war with the formerly loyal American seamen” (Dickerson, The
Navigation Acts and the American Revolution). The effect of the
Board of Customs Act was particularly dramatic in Boston where
“popular opposition was immediate and increasingly violent, and more
and more merchants in Boston moved or were driven in the direction of
open defiance of enforcement” (English Historical Documents,
pp. 710). The escalating
violence prompted Commodore Samuel Hood
of the British Navy to send the warship Romney to Boston harbor, a
harbinger of violence to come. The colonists responded to the Townsend Acts by organizing a series of non-importation agreements that would force English merchants to share in the economic pain. The Repeal of the Townsend Acts came in 1770: all the Townsend duties were dropped except for the tea tax, but the damage was done: “A century of wisely administered trade and navigation laws had developed the greatest and most loyal colonial Empire in the world. Abandonment of that policy destroyed the Empire in less than ten years” (Dickerson, The Navigation Acts and the American Revolution). |