Townshend Duties (June 29, 1767)

Led by Charles Townshend, the British Parliament passed customs duties in 1767, called the Townshend Duties, to raise revenue from the North American colonies. This measure triggered a new wave of conflict between the colonies and Great Britain.

The Rockingham administration that had repealed the Stamp Act (1765) in the spring of 1766, and that appeared so favorable to the colonies, did not last through the summer after repeal. In its place William Pitt, now Lord Chatham, organized a new government. Chatham, however, was not the same energetic man who had led Britain to victory in the French and Indian War (1754-63). The leadership of his administration soon fell into drift, and Charles Townshend ended up playing a leading role in molding policy by the spring of 1767. A ?500,000 tax cut in Great Britain, combined with continued colonial expenses, convinced Townshend to raise revenue in North America for colonial administration. News that the colonial assembly in New York had refused to comply with the Quartering Act of 1765 further aggravated the situation. Some colonial Americans had distinguished between internal and external taxation, including Benjamin Franklin in testimony before Parliament, during the Stamp Act crisis. Internal taxes, like the Stamp Act were intended to raise revenue within the colonies and were by right, so colonial

Americans claimed, the province of their own assemblies. External taxes were duties and regulations that governed imperial relations and were within the powers of Parliament to manage the empire. Townshend decided to use this distinction and have Parliament pass duties on glass, lead, painter’s colors, paper, and tea imported into the colonies. These “external” taxes would raise about ?40,000. This money was to be used to pay royal officials in the colonies and make them independent of the colonial assemblies. In addition, Townshend also had passed a series of rules and regulations to make customs collection more efficient, including the expansion of the Admiralty Court system (see also Vice-Admiralty Courts).

Colonial Americans were unsure of how to respond to the Townshend Duties, and the resistance movement (1764-75) never assumed the full proportions it had against the Stamp Act. Some colonists acknowledged that Parliament may have acted within its proper bounds by passing the customs regulations, even if the intent was to raise revenue. Others began to argue that the distinction between internal and external taxes was invalid if the external tax was not to regulate the empire, but to raise money. This point gained in popularity after it appeared in John Dickinson’s Letters from a Pennsylvanian Farmer (1767-68). Still, attempts to set up nonimportation agreements had difficulty getting started, as merchants in some seaports refused to join in, undercutting the efforts of merchants in other seaports. The Massachusetts legislature strove to take the lead, issuing a Circular Letter (February 11, 1768) admitting the right of Parliament to be “the supreme legislative Power over the whole Empire,” but asserting that it was one of the “fundamental Rules of the British Constitution” that an individual could not have his property taken away from him without his own consent—in other words, only the direct representatives of the colonists could tax the colonies. Since only a few colonial assemblies were in session, the response to this letter was not great.

In 1768 and 1769, however, tensions between the colonies and Great Britain increased, especially in Boston. The Massachusetts Circular Letter had alienated Governor Francis Bernard from the assembly. Simultaneously, conflicts erupted in the street between newly appointed customs officials and the people of Boston. Several riots ensued, especially after custom’s agents seized John Hancock’s sloop the Liberty in June 1768 (see also Liberty riot). To help control the situation, the British government ordered troops to Boston. Against this backdrop, resistance began to spread. Customs officials were harassed in several ports, and some crowds began to use tarring and feathering as a means to humiliate a few lower officials. By 1769 a nonimportation movement finally began to take hold across the colonies. Animosity between the British troops in Boston and New York City, which was as much over the competition for jobs as imperial problems, led to confrontations known as the Battle of Golden Hill in New York (January 18, 1770) and the Boston Massacre (March 5, 1770) in New England’s leading port.

By the time those two conflicts took place, the leaders of Parliament had decided to abandon the Townshend Duties. Recognizing the unpopularity of the measures in the colonies, and realizing that the hoped for revenue was not forthcoming, a new set of ministers decided to abandon the regulations. The government under Lord Frederick North in April 1770 repealed all the duties, except the tax on tea. Like the Declaratory Act (1766), the one remaining duty on tea was meant as a symbolic gesture to assert Parliamentary supremacy. The repeal effectively defused the imperial crisis until 1773.

Further reading: Robert Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982).