The Stamp Act Reaches Every Colonial Printed Page

In 1765 Parliament passed a second revenue act for America, a year after the Sugar Act. Its preamble recalls the earlier act's duties for "defending, protecting, and securing" the colonies and says it is "just and necessary" that a further revenue be raised within the King's American dominions to cover those expenses. The Office of the Historian of the State Department notes that Britain came out of the Seven Years' War heavily in debt, and that Prime Minister George Grenville proposed the stamp tax after the 1764 Currency Act.

The act required stamp duties, from November 1, 1765, on paper used for court pleadings and other legal papers, on pamphlets and newspapers, on almanacs and calendars, on advertisements, and on playing cards and dice. Unlike the Sugar Act's duties on goods crossing the ocean, this tax fell on documents used in everyday colonial life. The money was to be paid into the Exchequer, entered apart from other revenue, and disposed of by Parliament toward the costs of defending the colonies. The act also allowed penalties to be recovered in courts of vice admiralty as well as in ordinary courts.

The response was broad. According to the Office of the Historian, the Virginia House of Burgesses passed resolutions denying Parliament's authority to tax the colonies, colonists in Boston rioted and destroyed the house of the stamp distributor, and delegates from nine colonies met in October 1765 to petition against the tax. A boycott of British goods, together with recession, led British merchants to press for repeal. The act's repeal quieted the protest for a time, but the question it raised, who may tax whom and with whose consent, ran through the Townshend Acts, the Tea Party and the break with Britain, and later shaped how the national government's power to tax was framed.