Chapter 17: The Stamp That Tested the Colonists' Trust. Grenville began brainstorming for ways to tax the colonists that would be equitable, efficient, and inexpensive to enforce. He looked at the possibility of imposing new tariffs on colonial imports and exports. But when he examined the records, he discovered to his dismay that the thirteen colonies were a nation of lawbreakers. Britain was receiving from its existing colonial tariffs a grand total of only about 1,800 British pounds a year.
That wasn't enough to finance even one fort on the frontier, so there was no point in levying more tariffs. Grenville eventually decided that the best way to tax the colonists was to use a stamp tax. The stamp tax system had been used in Britain for more than fifty years, and it worked very efficiently there. In fact, it's still used in Britain today. So neither Grenville nor Parliament anticipated any problems when they introduced the stamp tax into the colonies.
As used in England, the stamp tax required all legal documents and certain printed articles, such as newspapers, to carry a stamp showing that the tax had been paid for that document. The cost of the stamp varied from a penny to several British pounds, depending on the nature of the document. Documents needed by the poor bore a very small tax. Documents used mainly by wealthy businessmen carried a higher tax. A stamp tax was ideal because it was largely self-executing.
Legal documents such as contracts, wills, and deeds had to be written on paper that had been specially embossed with the required stamp, or else the document was legally invalid. As for newspapers, it would be difficult for printers to evade the tax because each printed newspaper would bear its own evidence as to whether the stamp tax had been paid or not.
So introducing a stamp tax in the colonies seemed to be the perfect way to raise revenue to defray part of what it cost to maintain forts and soldiers on the American frontier. The stamp tax would cost little money to enforce, it would be very difficult to evade, and it wouldn't affect daily necessities or dampen commerce. Grenville estimated that the stamp tax would bring in between 80,000 and 100,000 British pounds, or about one-third of the expense to maintain troops on the frontier.
The thirteen colonies had about one and a half million free persons at the time the Stamp Act was passed, so an annual expenditure of only sixteen pennies per person would have raised the needed sum. In today's currency, that would be about ten dollars per person. Attempts to Work with the Colonists. Nevertheless, because Parliament had never imposed such a tax on the colonies, Grenville decided on extra steps to make the tax even more palatable to the colonists.
First, the Stamp Act required that the tax collectors for this tax would have to be fellow American colonists. In addition, the Act required that all of the monies raised by the stamp tax had to be spent in the colonies. None of the money could go back to England. The solution seemed perfect, and the proposal of the Stamp Act elicited very little discussion from the members of Parliament or from the British press. Grenville then took another unprecedented step.
After it was passed, the Stamp Act wouldn't go in effect for nearly a year. This provision had two purposes. One was to allow time to appoint the colonial officers who would collect and enforce the tax. The other purpose was to allow the colonists time to present feedback to Parliament on any changes they felt should be made to the Act. If the colonists wanted, they could propose a totally different way to raise the needed revenue from the colonies.
However, only a few colonies, such as Pennsylvania, used this window of time to give peaceful input to Parliament. The other colonies used the waiting period to organize illegal resistance to the Act. Response from the Thirteen Colonies. Although Grenville was a scrupulously honest accountant, he wasn't an astute politician. He took it for granted that the colonists would simply pay the tax if they couldn't propose a better substitute in its place.
After all, nearly all the colonists professed to be Christians, and the Bible commands followers of Jesus to "render therefore to all their due, taxes to whom taxes are due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor." Romans 13:7. Even Benjamin Franklin, who was in England at the time, didn't foresee any violent response in the colonies from the Stamp Act. In fact, Franklin had recommended one of his own friends to be appointed as one of the stamp tax collectors.
Since Franklin himself had been unable to predict the violent, lawless response of the colonists, can anyone blame Grenville for not having anticipated it? Regrettably, the colonists hadn't trusted God when faced with the Molasses Act and had disobeyed Caesar as a result. The Molasses Act had been relatively easy to violate through smuggling. But how would the colonists disobey the Stamp Act? There was no easy way to evade it. Would the colonists now finally trust in God, or at least grudgingly obey Him?
Not in the least. Since the colonists couldn't evade the stamp tax, they instead responded with mob violence. In place after place, mobs threatened the colonial tax collectors, beat them, or stripped them and poured hot tar on their bodies. In Massachusetts, the mobs were so audacious that they even attacked the governor's house. The mob ransacked his house, stole some of his silver and other valuables, and set his house on fire. The governor and his family barely escaped with their lives.
One of the men chosen to be a stamp tax collector was a Congregationalist pastor, Jared Ingersoll, Sr. Even though he was a minister, a mob surrounded his house and threatened his life until he finally agreed to resign his commission as a tax collector. Ingersoll was quite shocked by the response, for he had thought he was doing his countrymen a favor by serving as a tax collector. He assumed his fellow colonists would be thankful to have him as a tax collector instead of a foreign agent from England.
In addition to mob violence, some of the colonial legislators passed laws that attempted to nullify the Stamp Act or prevent its enforcement. They cut off salaries to public officials who attempted to enforce the Act. Some colonial judges even refused to recognize the Stamp Act, asserting that documents were still legal even if they didn't bear the stamp.
Benjamin Franklin, still in England at the time, was distressed when he heard about the mob violence and the near-treasonous speeches that Patrick Henry was making in the Virginia legislature. He wrote to a friend, "The rashness of the assembly in Virginia is amazing. I hope, however, that ours in Pennsylvania will keep within the bounds of prudence and moderation, for that is the only way to lighten or get clear of our burdens.
A firm loyalty to the Crown and faithful adherence to the government of this nation, which it is the safety as well as the honor of the colonies to be connected with, will always be the wisest course for you and I to take, whatever may be the madness of the populace or their blind leaders, who can only bring themselves and country into trouble and draw on greater burdens by acts of rebellious tendency." Although Franklin later switched sides and joined the blind leaders and the mad populace, what he said was
exactly true.
Their acts of rebellion would only bring on greater burdens. God has told Christians, "Whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers are not a terror to good works but to evil. Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same. For he is God's minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain.
For he is God's minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil." Romans 13:2-4. So God has invested rulers with the authority to bring judgment and to use the sword against those who disobey the law. But for Christians, that's not the main reason we obey our government's laws. It's because if we resist governmental authority, we are resisting the ordinance of God. How Other Colonies Responded.
Although our American history books give us the impression that the Stamp Act was something placed uniquely on the thirteen colonies, it applied to all English colonies in the New World, including Nova Scotia and Quebec. Although the citizens in those colonies didn't like the stamp tax either, they didn't resort to violence. Although they voiced their complaints, they paid the tax as required by Caesar's law and God's law. What was different about the Americans in the thirteen colonies?
Why did they respond differently from the other English colonies?