The Townshend Acts

In January of 1767, during the consideration of the House of Commons of the estimated cost of maintaining the British army in the colonies for the current year, George Grenville moved
"That the troops to be kept up in America shou'd be Paid by the Colonies respectively for whose defence & benefit they were Employ'd."
Charles Townshend, Chancellor of the Exchequer stated that he too "approved of our taxing the Colonies so as to provide for their own safety and preservation," and "by which the Colonies should be taxed conformable to their abilities, in a manner that should be least burdomsome and most efficacious."

The Townshend Acts, British legislation intended to raise revenue, tighten customs enforcement, and assert imperial authority in America, were sponsored by Chancellor of the Exchequer Charles Townshend, (right - 1725-67) and enacted on June 29, 1767. The key statute levied import duties on glass, lead, paint, paper, and tea. Its purpose was to provide salaries for some colonial officials so that the provincial assemblies could not coerce them by withholding wages.

Other bills authorized blank search warrants called Writs of Assistance, created three additional vice-admiralty courts, which operated without juries, established a Board of Customs Commissioners headquartered in Boston, and suspended the New York assembly for not complying with the Quartering Act of 1765. Parliament also passed the New York Restraining Act, which, in effect, suspended the provincial legislature until it provided “his Majesty's troops . . . with all such necessaries” as required by British law.

Americans protested the Townshend duties, as they had the earlier Stamp Act, with constitutional petitions, boycotts, and violence to even include "tar and feathering" (left). They now rejected all forms of parliamentary taxation, whether external duties on imports or internal taxes like the stamp levies. After colonists began to boycott British goods, Parliament altered the revenue measure on March 5, 1770. Duties on all items except tea were repealed. The tea tax was retained because it was the most lucrative and to show Americans that Parliament still had the right to tax them.

(See Bibliography Below)

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Picture Credit: The Scottish National Portrait Gallery (top); unknown (bottom).
Authors: Larry R. Gerlach; Robert J. Chaffin, Wisconsin State University; Ronald W. McGranahan, contributing.
Bibliography: Jensen, Merrill, The Founding of a Nation (1968); Namier, Lewis B., and Brooks, John, Charles Townshend (1964); Knollenberg, Bernhard, Growth of the American Revolution, 1766-1775 (1975).