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One of the objections to the Constitution had been that the people could now be taxed by two agencies, State and nation, thereby involving double taxes. The resistance to the excise tax, which began to be manifest in a small way soon after its institution in 1791, bore a striking resemblance to the rebellion against the stamp-tax levied by Britain upon the colonists a generation before.
The representatives of the colonists met in their own colonial assemblies, and these were willing to grant supplies of a larger amount than a stamp-tax would produce. Massachusetts first as ever in her protest marked accurately the position she took. "Prohibitions of trade are neither equitable nor just; but the power of taxing is the grand banner of British liberty.
To provide money for these unusual expenditures a loan of five million dollars for fifteen years was authorised, and a stamp-tax levied not unlike that of thirty years before, against which the colonists had rebelled.
In order to exempt it from the stamp-tax, and likewise to contribute as little as possible to the supposed guilt of a war against freedom, it was to be published on every eighth day, thirty-two pages, large octavo, closely printed, and price only four-pence.
And finally and most important, a stamp-tax, the easiest to collect, was laid on business and legal formalities of all kinds. After its passage no land title might be passed, no legal papers issued, no ship might clear from a home port, without a stamp affixed to the necessary documents. Not even inheritances might be transferred, nor marriages be legalized.
The stamp-tax would in no way have affected the poorer classes in the colonies. It would have been borne only by the rich and by those engaged in such business transactions as required stamped documents. I regard the present rebellion as the work of a clique of ambitious men who have stirred up the people by incendiary addresses and writings.
Pitt resumed office under the title of Lord Chatham, and with office he adopted other views as to the taxes to be imposed; in vain he sought to disguise them under the form of custom-house duties; the taxes on tea, glass, paper, excited in America the same indignation as the stamp-tax. Resistance was everywhere organized.
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