This is on pp. 94-95 of your book. 1. What kinds of taxes did colonists pay according to Franklin? What did the interviewer seem to think of the colonists' tax burden? What disagreements existed between Franklin and his interviewer on the purpose, legality, and feasibility of the stamp tax. According to Benjamin Franklin, colonists pay taxes for all kinds of things. This included property, polls, offices, professions, trades, businesses, alcoholic beverages, slavery, and more. The interviewer seemed to believe that the colonists’ tax burden was moderate and justified. He implied the former when he asked if the colonists could not afford to pay the taxes, and he stressed the latter when he asked if colonists deserved protection from Great Britain without payment. There are a number of disagreements between Franklin and his interviewer regarding the Stamp Act. The interviewer believes that colonies can afford to pay the tax, while Franklin argues otherwise. The interviewer argues that the purpose of the tax on stamps was to repay the country for its protection of the colonies, but Franklin argues that they already repaid this debt by spending many millions on raising, clothing, and paying nearly 25,000 men during the last war. The interviewer states that the Stamp Act is legal because of recent resolutions that assert the right of …show more content…
parliament to America and taxation of the people there, but Franklin replies that the colonists think such resolutions to be unjust and unconstitutional. There is an obvious tension and danger throughout this interview that results from a disagreement in which both sides fervently pressing their ideas. Franklin explicitly presents the fact that colonists are taxed on virtually everything and simply can’t afford to pay all the taxes. When he is challenged with justification for such taxes, he denounces each argument with an effective use of harsh facts and a hint of passive aggressiveness. Through these observations, it is apparent that the American colonies (including Franklin) had at this point accumulated a large collection of grievances towards their government, and Franklin did his best to peacefully explain the situation to the British government. 2. How did Franklin characterize the British-colonial relationship prior to 1763? At one point in the interview, the interviewer asks Franklin what the temper America had towards Great Britain before 1763 was, to which Franklin replies that the temper they held was the best in the world. He says that they willingly submitted to the royal government and paid their dues to Parliament. He supported this by saying that colonists paid taxes on most all of their purchases and actions for the purpose of supporting the military and discharging the debt created by the Seven Years' War. He later added that they raised, clothed, and paid nearly twenty-five thousand men, spending many millions in doing so. The interviewer later asked Franklin if Americans thought before 1763 that Parliament had no right to impose taxes on the colonists. Franklin replied that colonists never opposed Parliament in the imposition of taxes that regulated commerce. However, he added that colonists believed that the power to impose internal taxes never belonged to Parliament as the colonists were not represented there. The interviewer asked if colonists ever opposed to power of Parliament to regulate commerce through taxes before 1763, and Franklin replied that they didn't. The information regarding the colonies' relationship to Great Britain that Franklin presents throughout the interview for a binary opposition. The colonies were more than willing to obey the English government before the year 1763, yet they are now undeniably at odds. This sudden change in temper can be attributed, according to Franklin, to the passage of abusive and illegal laws such as the Stamp Act. This goes to show how strongly they opposed these new resolutions, which is further supported by the fact that they never submitted but rather continued towards revolution. 3. What colonial response to the Stamp Act and other "internal taxes" did Franklin predict? What, if anything, could Parliament do to enforce the colonists' compliance? Franklin predicted that Americans would simply not pay a stamp tax or any other tax that held semblance to it. When the interviewer informs him that these taxes are legal according to the House they were in and the House of Lords, Franklin replied that colonists would not submit to taxes such as the stamp tax because they would think them unjust and unconstitutional. Franklin explained that while Parliament had the power to tax commerce, they had no right to impose internal taxes without representing the colonists' interests. Franklin added that if the act was not repealed, America would lose all respect and affection for Great Britain, and the consequences of this would include the colonists' boycott of English imported goods. Early in the interview, Franklin states that nothing except for a force of arms would compel the colonists to pay the stamp tax.
However, when he is later asked if anything less than military force would carry the Stamp Act into execution, he replies that not even a military force could accomplish such a feat. He explains that if an army was sent into America, but found no enemies to battle with, they would be powerless to do anything other than starting a rebellion. He says that they cannot force a man to buy stamps if he chooses not to make use of them, for there exists no power great enough to change the opinion of a man by
force. Through these questions and answers, Franklin conveys the colonists' unwavering stance regarding internal taxing by Parliament. However, Franklin also conveys an implied message, which is that the colonists will have their way or abandon Great Britain. This is evidenced when he predicts that laws such as the Stamp Act will make Americans lose their attachment to England, and will thus abandon the nation. He proves this is not an empty threat by stating how little the colonies depend on the English, one example being how they could stop buying imported goods from England and replace the necessities with goods they produce themselves.
The author takes into the humanitarian aspect of revolution in prospect; he talks about how Americans wanted to be equal to Englishmen in respect to being represented in the House of Parliament. The "Stamp Act" is what the thoughts of the author are revolving around. Morgan associated the "Stamp Act" with what he believes Americans have reached before anyone else in the world which is "human equality." They have done so by denying that new taxes and tariffs...
Things in Jamestown were good. The people were fed, cared for, and happy. They created their own working government order, but, in a place where everything seems perfect, there is always one man to disagree. In this case, his name was Nathaniel Bacon.
Soame Jenyns, a member of the British Parliament from 1741 to 1780, wrote a pamphlet called “The Objections to the taxation consider’d” in 1765 in which he defended the Parliament’s right to tax the American colonies. Jenyns is clearly writing this to the colonists to read, almost seemly in a mocking way, as stated in the very first paragraph, “…who have ears but no understanding…” He then goes on to bring up three key points that the colonists have given as reasons not to be taxed by the
When the colonies were being formed, many colonists came from England to escape the restrictions placed upon them by the crown. Britain had laws for regulating trade and collecting taxes, but they were generally not enforced. The colonists had gotten used to being able to govern themselves. However, Britain sooned changed it’s colonial policy because of the piling debt due to four wars the British got into with the French and the Spanish. The most notable of these, the French and Indian War (or the Seven Years’ War), had immediate effects on the relationship between the colonies and Great Britain, leading to the concept of no taxation without representation becoming the motivating force for the American revolutionary movement and a great symbol for democracy amongst the colonies, as Britain tried to tighten their hold on the colonies through various acts and measures.
It was said, and is very true, that the British gave a lot to the colonists and we see such helpings as in the French and Indian war. The British gave up a lot of troops and money and numerous others in fighting that war, that the least that the colonist could do is to pay the taxes. Well they do have a good right to say that since they were the contributing factor in the colonists being safe from the French and Indians. The people, in the end should go about daily lives and pay the normal taxes, but you do have to draw the line somewhere. (DCT 1)
Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers to the United States, was not a patriot but a mere loyalist to England before the dissolution between England and the colonies occurred. Sheila L. Skemp's The Making of a Patriot explores how Benjamin Franklin tried to stay loyal to the crown while taking interest in the colonies perception and their own representation in Parliament. While Ms. Skemp alludes to Franklin's loyalty, her main illustration is how the attack by Alexander Wedderburn during the Privy Council led to Franklin's disillusionment with the British crown and the greater interest in making the Thirteen Colonies their own nation. Her analysis of Franklin's history in Parliament and what occurred on the night that the council convened proves the change behind Franklin's beliefs and what lead to his involvement in the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution. Benjamin Franklin was the colonial agent representing Massachusetts in Parliament in Britain.
The way that they paid there taxes is by buying a stamp for a silver coin, in this time silver coins were scarce in the colonies. This caused tension for the colonies leaders because they were being taxed without consent by the parliament. Then in October 1765, they sent the colonies representatives to the Stamp Act Congress in New York City. The representatives then went to the king to demand a petition protesting the stamp act. They later organized a boycott on buying any British goods.The protests were peaceful some of the Sons of Liberty burned the stamped paper whenever they could find it. They also attacked customs officials and covered with hot tar and feathers
The American Revolution was caused by a series of attempts from the British to tax American colonists. After a war against France, Britain ruled an enormous overseas empire. Britain however faced war debt and was in need of money to administer the overseas empire. The crown decided that since the colonists were the primary beneficiaries of this empire, it was time to have them contribute to the empire’s revenue by paying taxes.
...ned Stamp Act he stated that he, “never saw one of those Stamps” and that he was “certain I never paid a penny for one of them”. So with so much attention being paid to Thomas Paine and his “Common sense” and John Hancock’s larger than life signature, what was the reason for our revolution? While that question may never be answered, there are always the eternal words of Levi Preston, “what we meant in going in for those redcoats was this: we always had governed ourselves and we always mean to. That didn’t mean we should”
After the French and Indian War, the British government decided to make the American colonies pay a large share of the war debt with new taxes that they issued. The English ...
So the government decided to place taxes in. The Stamp Act was taxes, the Stamp Act it states, “Right and Power to lay Taxes and Impositions upon the inhabitants of this Colony.” It was hard for the merchant to trade because they had to pay taxes to people. In Zinn it said that merchants helped start a protest against the stamp act, “A political group in Boston called the Loyal Nine-merchants, distillers, shipowners, and master craftsmen who opposed the Stamp Act-organized a procession in August 1765 to protest it.” This shows that they didn’t like being tax. In “We are equally Free,” in said “Two years earlier, some merchants had organized boycotts against certain products imported from Great Britain (a strategy known as nonimportation) to resist British taxation measures aimed at the rebellious Americans.” As shown by this tried to protest
After the Great War for Empire, the British parliament began carrying out taxes on the colonists to help pay for the war. It was not long from the war that salutary neglect was brought on the colonies for an amount of time that gave the colonists a sense of independence and identity. A farmer had even wrote once: “Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labours and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world” (Doc H). They recognized themselves as different than the British, so when parliament began passing bills to tax without representation there was an outcry of mistreatment. Edmund Burke, a man from parliament, sympathized with the colonists: “Govern America as you govern an English town which happens not to be represented in Parl...
To start, the Stamp Act was a tax on the American colonies by the British Parliament. This act was formed in order to raise revenue to pay the costs of governing and protecting the American colonies. This act was supported by Britain’s Chancellor of the treasury department, George Greenville. Paul Gilje points out that, “Since Great Britain had accumulated a debt over £135 million the British first minister, George Greenville, thought it only appropriate that the colonies contribute to their own defense. Maintaining an army in North America would cost about £200,000 per year” (Gilje, Paul A). This act required stamps to be put on all legal and commercial documents such as licenses, liquor permits, newspapers, almanacs, advertisements, papers that were issued in the colonies and various articles like dice and playing cards. Colonists could not participate in any business without the stamped paper. Gilje also explains that, “Anyone interested in any transaction—whether it was buying a ...
The problem for many American colonists was not that taxes were high (the taxes were actually quite low, particularly compared with those paid by ordinary citizens of Britain), but that the colonies were not consulted about the new taxes, as they had no representation in Parliament. The colonists did not have any voting rights with regards to the taxes and so in order to avoid having to pay the taxes imposed on them the colonist’s boycotted British goods. This eventually led to the Boston Tea Party and other boycotts.
After the end of the French and Indian War in 1763 the American people had taxes placed on them by the British. The British Parliament claimed that by placing the taxes they were defending the colonies for the Americans. During the twelve years following the war, the British enacted a numerous amount of taxes that allowed them to raise revenue from the American economy. This taxing of the American people hurt the American economy and started to push the American colonists toward an independence movement so they could have a free economy. Over the course of the twelve-year period there were six acts enacted to take money from the American economy.