The Townshend Duties and John Dickinson

Charles Townshend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and his colleages belived the Townshend Duties would work -- where the Stamp Act had failed -- because these duties were external (paid at port by merchants) not internal. Also, these duties, they said, were for the regulation of trade; they were not taxes.

The colonists did not see the Townshend Duties in the same way the British did. The colonists belived that the duties were clearly taxes to raise revenue. Thus, the issue was the same as it had been with the Stamp Act: taxation without representation.

The call to resistance was sounded by Pennsylvania lawyer John Dickinson, Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies.

1. In this famous pamphlet -- first published as a series of newspaper articles -- Dickinson presented his case against the Parliamentary right to tax the colonies.

a. Letter II.

"The parliament [of Great Britain] unquestionably possesses a legal authority to regulate the trade of Great Britain, and all her colonies. Such an authority is essential to the relation between a mother country and her colonies; and necessary for the common good of all. He, who considers these provices as states distinct from the British Empire, has very slender notions of justice, or of their interests. We are all parts of a whole; and therefore there must exist a power somewhere to preside, and preserce the connection in due order. This power is lodged in the parliament."(Jack Greene, From Colonies to Nation, 125)

"I have looked over every statute relating to [the economic regulation of] these colonies, from their first settlement to this time; and I find every one of them founded on this principle, till the Stamp-Act administration. All before, are calculated to regulate trade, and preserve or promote a mutually beneficial intercourse between the several constituent parts of the empire; and though many of them imposed duties on trade, yet those duties were always imposed with design to restrain the comerce of one part, that was injurious to another, and thus to promote the general welfare. . . . "(125)

"[In the Stamp Act and Townshend duties] we may observe an authority expressly claimed and exerted to impose duties on these colonies; not for the regulation of trade; not for the preservation or promotion of a mutually beneficial intercourse between several constituent parts of the empire, hetofore the sole objects of parliamentary institutions; but for the single purpose of levying money upon us." (126)

"This I call an innovation; and a most dangerous innovation. It may perhaps be objected, that Great-Britain has a right to lay what duties she pleases upon her exports, and it makes no difference to us, whether they are paid here or there."(126)

"To this I answer. These colonies require many things for their use, which the laws of Great Britain prohibit them form getting any where but from here. Such are paper and glass."(126)

"That we may legally be bound to pay any general duties on these commodities relateive to the regulation of trade, is granted; but we being obliged by the laws to take from Great Britain, any special duteis imposed on their exportation to us only, with intention to raise a revenue from us only, are as much taxes, upon us, as those imposed by the Stamp Act."(126)

"Here then, my dear countrymen, rouse yourselves, and behold the ruin hanging over your heads. If you ONCE admit, that Great Britain may lay duties upon her exportations to us, for the purpose of levying money on us only, she then will have nothing to do, but to lay those duties on the articles which she prohibits us to manufacture - and the tragedy of American liberty is finished. . . . "(128)

"Upon the whole, the single question is, whether the parliament can legally impose duties to be paid by the people of these colonies only, for the sole purpose of raising a revenue, on commodities which she obliges us to take from her alone, or, in other words, whether the parliament can legally take money out of our pockets without our consent. If they can our boasted liberty is by a sound and nothing else."(128)