History Fun: Why Independence?

A friend of mine, inspired by our Independence Day celebrations, wrote “…we Declared our Independence from England partially to get away from heavy taxation and decreasing civil liberties.”

It’s a common refrain: Britain taxed us too much, so we left.  If only bad old England hadn’t taxed us so much.

 

But the thing is, that’s not true.  While taxes were certainly a part of the complaint, they weren’t a major complaint.

 

I’m not going to do a complete history of the Revolutionary War – I’d be posting for MONTHS.  No, this is just addressing the root causes of the war.  That is, I’m going to tell you just WHY we “Declared our Independence from England.”

Don’t believe me?  Let’s go to the source: here are the 26 reasons our Founding Fathers actually gave in the aforementioned Declaration for dissolving our relationship to Great Britain.  And I’m going to number them, to make them easier to discuss.

1. He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
2. He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
3. He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
4. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
5. He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
6. He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
7. He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
8. He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
9. He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
10. He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
11. He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
12. He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
13. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
14. For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
15. For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
16. For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
17. For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
18. For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
19. For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
20. For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
21. For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
    For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
22. He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
23. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
24. He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
25. He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
26. He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

As you can see, “taxes” is number 17 on the list.  And it doesn’t say anything about “heavy” taxation.  Instead, the complaint is that we were taxes without being asked, first. 

 

The taxes in question were a series of acts by Parliament in the wake of the French and Indian War.  Having won the war, Parliament sought to cover the expenses they’d made. 

The first was the Revenue Act of 1763; it was actually a revision of 1733’s Molasses Act.  The Molasses Act  placed a duty on molasses brought into the Colonies from the Caribbean; it was largely ignored because they could smuggle it in fairly easily.  The Revenue Act sought to tighten up enforcement.  It also lowered the tax rate by half, so Parliament thought the colonists would pay it willingly.  But the act also listed several goods that would now only be exported to England, including lumber and iron.  Violators would not be tried in a court of law with a jury, but rather in an admiralty court.  And the act didn’t apply to the British West Indies. 

 

But things didn’t get messy until the Stamp Act of 1765.  Among its provisions was the requirement that many printed materials had to be produced on stamped paper produced in London; legal documents, magazines, playing cards, newspapers and so forth.  Furthermore, the tax had to be paid in valid British currency – something in short supply in the colonies, most of whom produced their own paper money.

The earlier acts all taxed “externally.”  That is, they only applied to things being brought into the colonies, and not things traded between the colonies.  But the Stamp Act affected the colonies internally – it taxed goods they exchanged among the colonies, and even exchanges within each colony.

 

Benjamin Franklin travelled to Britain in 1766 in order to speak to Parliament on the issue of the Stamp Act:

Q.  Was it an opinion in America before 1763 that the Parliament had no right to lay taxes and duties there?

  A.  I never heard an objection to the right of laying duties to regulate commerce; but a right to lay internal taxes was never supposed to be in Parliament, as we are not represented there.

  Q.  On what do you found your opinion that the people in America made any such distinction?

  A.  I know that whenever the subject has occurred in conversation where I have been present, it has appeared to be the opinion of every one that we could not be taxed by a Parliament wherein we were not represented. But the payment of duties laid by an act of Parliament as regulations of commerce was never disputed.

  Q.  But can you name any act of assembly or public act of any of your governments that made such distinction?

  A.  I do not know that there was any. I think there was never an occasion to make any such act till now that you have attempted to tax us; that has occasioned resolutions of assembly declaring the distinction, in which I think every assembly on the continent and every member in every assembly have been unanimous.

  Q.  You say the Colonies have always submitted to external taxes, and object to the right of Parliament only in laying internal taxes; now can you show that there is any kind of difference between the two taxes to the Colony on which they may be laid?

  A.  I think the difference is very great. An external tax is a duty laid on commodities imported; that duty is added to the first cost and other charges on the commodity, and, when it is offered for sale, makes a part of the price. If the people do not like it at that price, they refuse it; they are not obliged to pay it. But an internal tax is forced from the people without their consent if not laid by their own representatives. The Stamp Act says we shall have no commerce, make no exchange of property with each other, neither purchase nor grant, nor recover debts; we shall neither marry nor make our wills, unless we pay such and such sums; and thus it is intended to extort our money from us or ruin us by the consequence of refusing to pay it.

So you can see, while the taxes did make the colonists unhappy, their major complaint is that they had no say in their creation: unlike British citizens living in the United Kingdom, the colonists had no representation in Parliament.  No one was there to speak on their behalf.