The Stamp Act

Gerald Pollio ()

Chapter Chapter 9 in The Rise and Fall of Britain’s North American Empire, 2022, pp 127-148 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The Stamp Act of 1765 was the first in a series of revenue measures passed by Parliament to increase the amount of revenue raised from Americans. Stamp duties were not unknown in the colonies and were generally considered more equitable than many alternatives. However, the measure was the first internal tax levied directly on Americans and deemed unacceptable because under English law direct taxes could be imposed only with the consent of those being taxed. Following widespread opposition, the Act was repealed by Parliament the following year, but adding insult to injury it was followed by a Declaratory Act that reaffirmed Parliament’s power over the colonies was absolute. The Act imposed a tax on all paper documents produced in the colonies, thus raising the cost of newspapers, land and property registrations, and all forms of litigation thus alienating important segments of colonial society who, in due course, became opponents of the status quo. As things turned out, the costs of the measure far outweighed the income it generated.

Keywords: Revenue; Sterling; Printing; Land conveyances (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-031-07484-4_9

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783031074844

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-07484-4_9

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().