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But the colonies, instead of making any proposal for raising a revenue by a stamp-duty or any other way, sent home petitions to be presented to King, Lords, and Commons, questioning, in the most direct and positive terms, the jurisdiction of Parliament over their properties.
Therefore the bill for laying a stamp-duty upon the colonies was brought into parliament; which, after much debate, and many strong arguments urged on both sides, passed through both houses, and received the royal assent by commission, on the 22d of March, 1765.
That the sum of eighteenpence should be exacted by the state from every person a poor housemaid, for example on advertising for a situation, is, to say the least of it, inexpressibly shabby. The stamp-duty of one penny on each newspaper is reckoned to be the third of these taxes on knowledge.
A stamp-duty upon the law proceedings of each particular court, to be levied by that court, and applied towards the maintenance of the judges, and other officers belonging to it, might in the same manner, afford a revenue sufficient for defraying the expense of the administration of justice, without bringing any burden upon the general revenue of the society.
Our trade to America brings in, 'communibus annis', two millions a year; and the Stamp-duty is estimated at but one hundred thousand pounds a year; which I would by no means bring into the stock of the Exchequer, at the loss or even the risk of a million a year to the national stock. One hears of nothing now in town, but the separation of men and their wives.
The only two other articles which come under this description are the stamp-duty on gold and silver plate, and the customs on glass plates. This latter is now, I believe, the single instance of costly furniture to be found in the catalogue of our imports. If it were wholly to vanish, I should not think we were ruined.
In the following year the reduction of the stamp-duty on newspapers to one penny led to a great increase in that branch of the service. "But now approached the time for the greatest reform of all that reduction of postage of which I have already spoken namely, the uniform rate of one penny for all inland letters not exceeding a certain weight.
George the Third was at that moment insane, and the Act was signed by a commission. Resistance in the colonies was not expected. Franklin thought that the Act would go into effect; even Otis said that it ought to be obeyed. It laid a moderate stamp-duty on the papers necessary for legal and commercial transactions.
The Governor well knew that the Patriots abhorred the outrages of the twenty-sixth of August as much as they gloried in the uprising against the stamp-duty on the fourteenth of August. Hutchinson, moreover, was a good deal disturbed by the public affronts put upon the Commissioners, who were still at the Castle, though their subordinates were in town collecting the revenue.
The other, imposing a stamp-duty on small pamphlets, only placed them on the same footing with newspapers. The last of the new measures "to prevent more effectually seditious meetings and assemblies" was practically aimed against all large meetings, unless called by the highest authorities in counties and corporate towns, or, at least, five justices of the peace.
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