A History of the American People

Postmaster-General, the Bishop of London-all were involved in the colonies. The Admiralty
alone had fifteen branches scattered all over a city which was already 5 miles wide. There were
bureaucratic delays and a five-week voyage added to each end. As Edmund Burke was to put it,
Seas roll and months pass between order and execution.’ On top of this there was taxation. Like all Americans, Washington paid few taxes before the mid-1760s and resented those he did pay. Now the British government proposed to put colonial taxation on an entirely new basis. The Seven Years War was the most expensive Britain had ever waged. Before it, the national debt had stood at £60 million. It was now-1764-£133 million, more than double. The interest payments were enormous. The British Treasury calculated that the public debt carried by each Englishman was £18, whereas a colonial carried only 18 shillings. An Englishman paid on average 25 shillings a year in taxes, a colonial only sixpence, one-fiftieth. Why, argued the British elite, should this outrageous anomaly be allowed to continue, especially as it was the American colonies which had benefited more from the war? George Grenville, now in charge of British policy, was a pernickety and self-righteous gentleman determined to correct this anomaly by introducing what he calledRules of Right
Conduct' between Britain and America. As Burke said, he `had a rage for regulation and
restriction.' His attack was two-pronged. First, he determined to get Americans to pay existing
taxes, which were indirect, customs duties and the like. In the English-speaking world, normally
law-abiding, evading customs was a universal passion, practiced by high and low, rich and poor.
The smugglers who pandered to this passion formed huge armies of rascally seamen, who fought
pitched battles on the foreshore and sometimes well inland with His Majesty's Customs Service,
who became equally brutal and ruthless in consequence (and still are). But if the English evaded
customs duties, the Americans largely got off scot-free because the Colonial Customs Service
was inefficient and corrupt. It cost more than it collected. Its officials were almost invariably
absentees whose work was done, or not done, by deputies. It was popularly supposed that the
duties thus lost amounted to £700,000 annually, though the true figure was nearer £500,000.
Grenville's so-called Sugar or Revenue Act of 1764 halved the duty on molasses but provided for
strict enforcement. Officials were ordered to their posts. A new Vice-Admiralty Court was set up
in Halifax. Nova Scotia, to impose harsh penalties. Suddenly, there were a lot of officious
revenue men everywhere. One critic, Benjamin Franklin, reported to the Boston elders that low-
born and needy people were being given these jobs a anyone better would not take them:
Their necessities make them rapacious, their offices make then proud and insolent, their
insolence and rapacity make them odious and being conscious they are hated they become
malicious; their malice urges them to a continual abuse of the inhabitants in their letters of
administration, presenting them as disaffected and rebellious, and to encourage the use of
severity) as weak, divided, timid and cowardly Government believes all; thinks it necessary to
support and countenance its officers; their quarrelling with the people is deemed a mark and
consequence of their fidelity ... I think one may clearly see, in the system of customs now being
exacted in America by Act of Parliament the seeds sown of a total disunion of the two
countries."
Franklin's neat summary says it all. But soon there was more. Grenville thought it monstrous
that India should pay for itself by having its own taxes and paying its bills, netting large profits
for the English gentlemen lucky enough to have posts there, whereas America was run at a
thumping loss. So he devised (1765) a special duty for America called the Stamp Act. This was
an innovation, which made it horribly objectionable to Americans, who paradoxically were very
conservative about such things. It caused exactly the same outrage among them as Charles I's