Summary
In August 1766, months after the repeal of the Stamp Act, King George
III dismissed the Rockingham government and chose William Pitt as the new
prime minister. Pitt opposed taxing the colonies, and the colonists widely
supported this move. However, Pitt became seriously ill shortly after
assuming office, and effective control of the government, and colonial policy,
passed to Charles Townshend, the chancellor of the exchequer (treasurer).
During this transition of power, tensions arose in New York in regard to the
1765 Quartering Act. The Quartering Act required colonial legislatures to
pay for certain goods for soldiers stationed within their borders. The goods
were generally inexpensive, and the law only applied to soldiers in settled
areas, not on the frontier. Most colonies were not dramatically affected by the
payments, but New York, which had more soldiers stationed within its boundaries
than any other colony, was more greatly burdened by the Quartering Act, and
refused to comply with the law.
Townshend responded to this display of opposition by drafting the New York
Suspension Act, which would have nullified any laws passed by New York's
colonial legislature after October 1, 1767 unless the assembly voted to pay for
the troops' supplies. Aiming to head off future trouble, the assembly caved.
Meanwhile, in Britain, elites were continuously outraged over the high taxes
they paid in order to support British debt. In 1767, the elite landowners used
their influence in the House of Commons to cut their taxes by one-fourth,
leaving the British treasury short 500,000 pounds compared to the previous year.
Townshend proposed laws to tax imports into the American colonies to make up for
this lost revenue. Parliament passed the Revenue Act of 1767 on July 2, 1767.
Popularly referred to as the Townshend duties, the Revenue Act taxed glass,
lead, paint, paper, and tea entering the colonies.
The Revenue Act never yielded as much income as Townshend anticipated. Tea was
the only major source of revenue, bringing in 20,000 pounds yearly, out of the
total of 37,000 pounds the Revenue Act brought in. This high revenue was
only possible because the British had lowered the price of British tea so that
Americans would purchase it over less expensive smuggled tea. To accomplish
this, Parliament had eliminated 60,000 pounds of import fees paid on British
East Indian tea coming through Britain before being shipped out to the colonies.
Thus the net product of the Townshend duties was a 23,000 pound loss for the
British territory. Though ineffective in raising revenue, the Townshend duties
proved remarkably effective in stirring up political dissent that had lain
dormant since the repeal of the Stamp Act.
The colonists hailed the ascension of William Pitt as the best thing that could
have happened to British government, since Pitt was the most respected English
politician in America. Pitt, a friend of the colonies, had the potential to
steer Anglo-American relations off of the disastrous course they had taken over
the past several years. No one knows what might have happened had he not fallen
ill so soon. Townshend, in contrast to Pitt, was no friend of the colonies and
counted himself among those who were concerned that the colonists were not
pulling their weight as British subjects. Townshend's colonial policy convinced
the colonists that the Stamp Act had not been an isolated mistake, but rather a
small piece in a larger antagonistic plan to undermine colonial efforts at self-
governance.
Before New York revived the tension between the colonies and the British
government, the conflict had cooled dramatically. However, New York's defiance
of what its legislature saw as an indirect tax refueled the cooling fires of
anger and bitterness toward the American colonies in the House of Commons. The
drafting of the New York Suspension Act demonstrated that British officials
would not hesitate to defend parliamentary power by usurping a colony's self-
governance, a sobering thought for colonists, which led them to begin to
question the justice of British rule.
