The Proclamation of 1763
The Proclamation of 1763 was issued by the British King George III whose
picture can be seen from the adjacent portrait. The Proclamation of 1763 was
made following the British victory over France in the French and Indian Wars.
The Royal Proclamation of 1763 was perceived as being beneficial to the Native
American Indians and Great Britain but as detrimental to the colonists.
This article provides fast facts and interesting information about the
Proclamation of 1763 and its significance upon the colonists and a map
illustrating the massive border between the colonists and the Native America
Indians referred to as the Proclamation Line.
British Proclamation of 1763 Summary and Definition: The Royal Proclamation
of 1763 was issued October 7, 1763, by King George III following Great
Britain's acquisition of French territory in North America following the end of
the French and Indian Wars with the Peace of Paris which concluded the Seven
Years' War in Europe and the French Indian War in America. The Royal
Proclamation of 1763 was designed to calm the fears of Native Indians by
halting the westward expansion by colonists whilst expanding the lucrative fur
trade.
Writs of Assistance
Before the American Revolution, many citizens in Colonial America were
growing angry with the British government for a variety of reasons. One of
these reasons revolved around the Writs of Assistance.
A writ is just another word for a court order. The Writs of Assistance were court
orders that enabled British soldiers to carry out searches of Colonial homes
and businesses without just cause or specific substantiation. The Writs of
Assistance played a major role in the Colonists' dissatisfaction with England.
British officers used Writs of Assistance as ways to increase their power over
the Colonists. Though the writs were originally developed to combat smuggling
in the colonies, British officers began to use the powers granted to them in the
Writs of Assistance to exert more pressure on the Colonists.
The Writs of Assistance did not require British officers to have any type of
specific evidentiary suspicion or justification before committing a search. They
also did not require any particular time frame, as they were good for the
duration of the monarch. As a result of such latitude, Colonial places of
businesses and homes were searched without any hesitation.
The Stamp Act
The Stamp Act was passed by the British Parliament on March 22, 1765. The new
tax was imposed on all American colonists and required them to pay a tax on every
piece of printed paper they used. Ship's papers, legal documents, licenses,
newspapers, other publications, and even playing cards were taxed. The money
collected by the Stamp Act was to be used to help pay the costs of defending and
protecting the American frontier near the Appalachian Mountains (10,000 troops
were to be stationed on the American frontier for this purpose).
The actual cost of the Stamp Act was relatively small. What made the law so
offensive to the colonists was not so much its immediate cost but the standard it
seemed to set. In the past, taxes and duties on colonial trade had always been
viewed as measures to regulate commerce, not to raise money. The Stamp Act,
however, was viewed as a direct attempt by England to raise money in the colonies
without the approval of the colonial legislatures. If this new tax were allowed to
pass without resistance, the colonists reasoned, the door would be open for far
more troublesome taxation in the future.
Few colonists believed that they could do anything more than grumble and buy the
stamps until the Virginia House of Burgesses adopted Patrick Henry's Stamp Act
Resolves. These resolves declared that Americans possessed the same rights as the
English, especially the right to be taxed only by their own representatives; that
Virginians should pay no taxes except those voted by the Virginia House of
Burgesses; and that anyone supporting the right of Parliament to tax Virginians
should be considered an enemy of the colony. The House of Burgesses defeated the
most extreme of Henry's resolutions, but four of the resolutions were adopted.
Virginia Governor Fauquier did not approve of the resolutions, and he dissolved
the House of Burgesses in response to their passage.
The Sugar Act
On April 5, 1764, Parliament passed a modified version of the Sugar and
Molasses Act (1733), which was about to expire. Under the Molasses Act
colonial merchants had been required to pay a tax of six pence per gallon on
the importation of foreign molasses. But because of corruption, they mostly
evaded the taxes and undercut the intention of the tax — that the English
product would be cheaper than that from the French West Indies. This hurt the
British West Indies market in molasses and sugar and the market for rum,
which the colonies had been producing in quantity with the cheaper French
molasses.
The First Lord of the Treasury, and Chancellor of the Exchequer Lord Grenville
was trying to bring the colonies in line with regard to payment of taxes. He had
beefed up the Navy presence and instructed them to become more active in
customs enforcement. Parliament decided it would be wise to make a few
adjustments to the trade regulations. The Sugar Act reduced the rate of tax on
molasses from six pence to three pence per gallon, while Grenville took
measures that the duty be strictly enforced. The act also listed more foreign
goods to be taxed including sugar, certain wines, coffee, pimiento, cambric and
printed calico, and further, regulated the export of lumber and iron. The
enforced tax on molasses caused the almost immediate decline in the rum
industry in the colonies. The combined effect of the new duties was to sharply
reduce the trade with Madeira, the Azores, the Canary Islands, and the French
West Indies (Guadelupe, Martinique and Santo Domingo (now Haiti)), all
important destination ports for lumber, flour, cheese, and assorted farm
products. The situation disrupted the colonial economy by reducing the
markets to which the colonies could sell, and the amount of currency available
to them for the purchase of British manufactured goods. This act, and the
Currency Act, set the stage for the revolt at the imposition of the Stamp Act.
The Townshend Acts
The Townshend Acts imposed a series of taxes on all goods imported into the
United States. These taxes were instituted for a couple of reasons. First, was
the ongoing need to raise revenue. However, more important than the revenue
was the desire of the parliament to show they had the right to impose the
taxes.
In 1766, a new government came into power in Great Britain. This new
government, like those before it, came to the conclusion it needed to raise
additional money from the colonies. Charles Townshend was the Chancellor of
the Exchequer. Townshend immediately began investigating means to increase
revenue from the colonies. He came up with the idea of placing a duty on items
imported into the colonies. Townshend's plan was to place that taxation only
on items that were not critical for trade. He did not want to disrupt any
important trade. Townshend ultimately developed a list of items to tax, that
included, glass, painter's colors, high quality paper wine and other items.
These were all items that were not produced in the colonies and would be
difficult to smuggle.
Townshend also developed a plan to establish a Customs Commission in the
Americas to enforce the new taxes. The Tax Commissioners would be
colonialists who would receive payment from the crown.
The Tea Act
The Tea Act of 1773 was one of several measures imposed on the American
colonists by the heavily indebted British government in the decade leading up
to the American Revolutionary War (1775-83). The act’s main purpose was not
to raise revenue from the colonies but to bail out the floundering East India
Company, a key actor in the British economy. The British government granted
the company a monopoly on the importation and sale of tea in the colonies. The
colonists had never accepted the constitutionality of the duty on tea, and the
Tea Act rekindled their opposition to it. Their resistance culminated in the
Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773, in which colonists boarded East India
Company ships and dumped their loads of tea overboard. Parliament
responded with a series of harsh measures intended to stifle colonial resistance
to British rule; two years later the war began.
THE QUARTERING ACT
The Quartering Act of 1765 required the colonies to house British soldiers in
barracks provided by the colonies. If the barracks were too small to house all
the soldiers, then localities were to accommodate the soldiers in local inns,
livery stables, ale houses, victualling houses, and the houses of sellers of wine.
Should there still be soldiers without accommodation after all such publick
houses were filled, the colonies were then required to take, hire and make fit
for the reception of his Majesty’s forces, such and so many uninhabited
houses, outhouses, barns, or other buildings as shall be necessary.
As the language of the act makes clear, the popular image of Redcoats tossing
colonists from their bedchambers in order to move in themselves was not the
intent of the law; neither was it the practice. However, the New York colonial
assembly disliked being commanded to provide quarter for British troops–they
preferred to be asked and then to give their consent, if they were going to have
soldiers in their midst at all. Thus, they refused to comply with the law, and in
1767, Parliament passed the New York Restraining Act. The Restraining Act
prohibited the royal governor of New York from signing any further legislation
until the assembly complied with the Quartering Act.
In New York, the governor managed to convince Parliament that the assembly
had complied. In Massachusetts, where barracks already existed on an island
from which soldiers had no hope of keeping the peace in a city riled by the
Townshend Revenue Acts, British officers followed the Quartering Act’s
injunction to quarter their soldiers in public places, not in private homes.
Within these constraints, their only option was to pitch tents on Boston
Common. The soldiers, living cheek by jowl with riled Patriots, were soon
involved in street brawls and then the Boston Massacre of 1770, during which
not only five rock-throwing colonial rioters were killed but any residual trust
between Bostonians and the resident Redcoats. That breach would never be
healed in the New England port city, and the British soldiers stayed in Boston
until George Washington drove them out with the Continental Army in 1776.