The Preparation of the Stamp Act

T HE Stamp Act, imposed by the British Parliament upon the American colonies in i765, was the first major impetus given toward the American Revolution. A mere decade after that bill had become law, embattled Americans and British troops were engaged in what was to be a long and bloody struggle. Passions engendered on both sides of the Atlantic, first, by the violent debate concerning the right of Parliament to tax the colonies, and second, by the outbreak of hostilities, have served to obscure the original purpose of the Stamp Act. It was to have been a part of the home government's plan to create a new imperial system, which was urgently needed after the Peace of Paris. This was true because of the enormous territorial acquisitions made during the Seven Years' War, and because of certain other considerations, mentioned below, concerning the older, established British North American colonies. While this study is primarily concerned with the immediate preparation of the Stamp Act, yet it will not be amiss to look briefly at the general plan, of which the Stamp Act was but a part, envisaged by the Grenville Ministry. The situation which faced British statesmen at the conclusion of the Peace of i763 was staggering. How was the great tract of wilderness acquired in North America to be assimilated? Should the new conquests not be utilized, the decision to keep Canada and the West in preference to the French West Indian Sugar Islands could not be justified. When the problem is resolved into its component parts, there is discernible a number of conditions whose fulfilment was necessary before any truly imperial solution to the problem became possible. i. An Indian policy aimed at the pacification of the natives and at gaining their acquiescence in future white settlement of the West was urgently needed if White-Indian conflict was to be avoided. This implied uniform control of Indian affairs and trade, and also the fixing of definite boundary lines. The necessity of such measures was to be all too clearly demonstrated in the uprising of Pontiac in the very year that the Peace of Paris was made

American Constitutional Law and Politics · Canadian Identity and History · Computer Science

• Recent Contributions to American Economic History

  Open Access•Lawrence A Harper•The Journal of Economic History•1959

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• A Forgotten Prophet

  J M Bumsted•Canadian Review of American Studies•1982

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