Essay 2-C: The Stamp Act and Founding Documents

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

In March 1765, faced with the challenge of paying for stationing roughly 10,000 soldiers in its American colonies after the end of the French and Indian War, the British Parliament passed the Stamp Act, which imposed taxes of varying amounts on paper used for official documents, college diplomas, and newspapers, among other things, in the colonies.

Since it departed from the traditional means of raising revenue from the colonies—asking colonial legislatures for funding—the Act evoked a spirited response. In October 1765, the Stamp Act Congress convened in New York City. Representatives from nine colonies adopted a series of resolutions affirming and asserting “the most essential rights and liberties of the colonists.” Their central claim was that “it is inseparably essential to the freedom of a people, and the undoubted rights of Englishmen, that no taxes should be imposed on them, but with their own consent, given personally, or by their representatives.”

It is important to note the twofold nature of this claim. In the first place, the colonists were relying on “the undoubted rights of Englishmen.” They appealed to King and Parliament as loyal subjects of Great Britain, not yet asserting their independence as a people, demanding (in the words of the Declaration of Independence) “the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them.”

In the second place, the colonists affirm that these rights are not uniquely the product of English history, tradition, or culture, suitable only for Englishmen and women, but “essential to the freedom of a people,” any people. In making such a claim, they follow the argument of John Locke in his Second Treatise of Government: “Men therefore in Society having Property, they have such a Right to the Goods, which by the Law of the Community are theirs, that no Body hath a Right to take their Substance, or any Part of it, from them, without their own Consent; without this they have no Property at all.” Responding to the outcry and to the boycotts it inspired, Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in March, 1766. On the same day, however, it passed the Declaratory Act, which affirmed that it had “full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the colonies and people of America, subjects of the crown of Great Britain, in all cases whatsoever.” Despite the repeal, taxation without representation was still on the table.

This experience, and the understanding of legitimate self-government that informs it, had consequences, both in the Declaration of Independence and in the frameworks for national government the American founders devised. Thus, among the charges the Declaration of Independence lays at the feet of King George is this one: 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… For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent….Adopted a year later, in 1777, the Articles of Confederation scrupulously respected the authority of the state legislatures, elected by the people, to raise revenue for the United States.

“All charges of war, and all other expenses that shall be incurred for the common defence or general welfare, and allowed by the United States in congress assembled, shall be defrayed out of a common treasury, which shall be supplied by the several states…. The taxes for paying that proportion shall be laid and levied by the authority and direction of the legislatures of the several states”…. Because the national legislature, through the Articles of Confederation, was not directly elected by the people, recourse was with the states to provide for revenue.

It was widely acknowledged at the time that this method of public finance was inadequate to meet the exigencies of the war for independence, not to mention any future challenges the United States might face. In his April 1787 memorandum on the “Vices of the Political System of the United States,” James Madison gives pride of place to the “Failure of the States to comply with the Constitutional requisitions,” which, he says, “results so naturally from the number and independent authority of the States and has been so uniformly exemplified in every similar Confederacy, that it may be considered as not less radically and permanently inherent in, than it is fatal to the object of the present System.”

The first power the new Constitution accords to Congress is “To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States.” At the same time, it requires that “All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives,” that is, the chamber that is directly elected by the people.

We return here to the affirmation of the Stamp Act Congress that “it is inseparably essential to the freedom of a people…that no taxes should be imposed on them, but with their own consent, given personally, or by their representatives.”

Joseph M. Knippenberg is Professor of Politics at Oglethorpe University, Brookhaven, GA, where he has taught since 1985.  He received his B.A. from Michigan State University and his M.A. And Ph.D. from the University of Toronto.  He has published widely on topics in the history of political philosophy, religion and politics, and higher education, and currently serves on Board of Directors of the Association for Core Texts and Courses.  He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, and Omicron Delta Kappa, and has received numerous awards for teaching during his time at Oglethorpe.

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