Parliament Acts and Colonial Responses
Legislation
Sugar Act
Stamp Act
Quartering Act
Declaratory Act
Townshend Revenue
Acts
Tea Act
Coercive Acts
(Intolerable Acts)
Prohibitory Act
Date
April 5, 1764
March 22, 1765; repealed
March 18, 1766
May 1765
March 18, 1766
June 26, 29, July 2, 1767;
all repealed except duty
on tea, March 1770
May 10, 1773
March – June 1774
December 22, 1775
Provisions
Colonial Reaction
Revised duties on sugar,
coffee, tea, wine, other
imports; expanded
jurisdiction of viceadmiralty courts
Several assemblies protest
taxation for revenue
Printed documents
(deeds, newspapers,
marriage licenses, etc.)
issued only on special
stamped paper purchased
from stamp distributors
Riots in cities; collectors
forced to resign; Stamp
Act Congress (October
1765)
Colonists must supply
British troops with housing
and other items (candles,
firewood, etc.)
Parliament declares its
sovereignty over the
colonies “in all cases
whatsoever”
Protest in assemblies; New
York Assembly punished
for failure to comply, 1767
Ignored in celebration
over repeal of the Stamp
Act
New duties on glass, lead,
paper, paints, tea;
customs collections
tightened in America
Non-importation of British
goods; assemblies protest;
newspapers attack British
policy
Parliament gives East India
Company the right to sell
tea directly to Americans;
some duties on tea
reduced
Closes port of Boston;
restructures
Massachusetts
government; restricts
town meetings; troops
quartered in Boston;
British officials accused of
crimes sent to England or
Canada for trial
Protests against favoritism
shown to monopolistic
company; tea destroyed in
Boston (December 16,
1773)
Declares British intention
to coerce Americans into
submission; embargo on
American goods; American
ships seized
Boycott of British goods;
First Continental Congress
convenes (September
1774)
Drives Continental
Congress closer to
decision for independence
Parliament Acts and Colonial Responses is adapted from Divine, Robert A., T.H. Breen, George M. Fredrickson, and
R. Hal Williams. The American Story. New York; Longman, 2002, 161.
Acts of Parliament
Stamp Act, (1765), in U.S. colonial history, was the first British parliamentary attempt to raise revenue through direct taxation
of all colonial commercial and legal papers, newspapers, pamphlets, cards, almanacs, and dice. The devastating effect of
Pontiac’s War (1763–64) on colonial frontier settlements added to the enormous new defense burdens resulting from Great
Britain’s victory (1763) in the French and Indian War. The British chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir George Grenville, hoped to
meet at least half of these costs by the combined revenues of the Sugar Act (1764) and the Stamp Act, a common revenue
device in England. Completely unexpected was the avalanche of protest from the colonists, who effectively nullified the Stamp
Act by outright refusal to use the stamps as well as by riots, stamp burning, and intimidation of colonial stamp distributors.
Colonists passionately upheld their rights as Englishmen to be taxed only by their own consent through their own
representative assemblies, as had been the practice for a century and a half. In addition to nonimportation agreements among
colonial merchants, the Stamp Act Congress was convened in New York (October 1765) by moderate representatives of nine
colonies to frame resolutions of “rights and grievances” and to petition the king and Parliament for repeal of the objectionable
measures. Bowing chiefly to pressure (in the form of a flood of petitions to repeal) from British merchants and manufacturers
whose colonial exports had been curtailed, Parliament, largely against the wishes of the House of Lords, repealed the act in
early 1766. Simultaneously, however, Parliament issued the Declaratory Act, which reasserted its right of direct taxation
anywhere within the empire, “in all cases whatsoever.” The protest throughout the colonies against the Stamp Act contributed
much to the spirit and organization of unity that was a necessary prelude to the struggle for independence a decade later.
The Intolerable Acts, also called Coercive Acts, in U.S. colonial history, were four punitive measures enacted by the British
Parliament in retaliation for acts of colonial defiance, together with the Quebec Act establishing a new administration for the
territory ceded to Britain after the French and Indian War (1754–63). Angered by the Boston Tea Party (1773), the British
government passed the Boston Port Bill, closing that city’s harbor until restitution was made for the destroyed tea. Second, the
Massachusetts Government Act abrogated the colony’s charter of 1691, reducing it to the level of a crown colony, substituting
a military government under General Thomas Gage, and forbidding town meetings without approval.
The third, the Administration of Justice Act, was aimed at protecting British officials charged with capital offenses during law
enforcement by allowing them to go to England or another colony for trial. The fourth Coercive Act included new arrangements
for housing British troops in occupied American dwellings, thus reviving the indignation that surrounded the earlier Quartering
Act, which had been allowed to expire in 1770.
The Quebec Act, under consideration since 1773, removed all the territory and fur trade between the Ohio and Mississippi
rivers from possible colonial jurisdiction and awarded it to the province of Quebec. By establishing French civil law and the
Roman Catholic religion in the coveted area, Britain acted liberally toward Quebec’s settlers but raised the specter of popery
before the mainly Protestant colonies to Canada’s south.
In late 1775, Parliamentary leaders looked back over the preceding months and noted the total disintegration of the
relationship between the mother country and the 13 American colonies — Lexington, Concord, Bunker Hill, the seizure of
Ticonderoga and an invasion of Canada then in progress were stark evidence of the rupture. Retaliation came in the form of
the American Prohibitory Act that was designed to strike at the economic viability of the errant colonies. The law first stated
its rationale for action, noting the following:
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the colonies were staging a rebellion against the authority of king and Parliament
they had raised an army and engaged his majesty's soldiers
they had illegally taken over the powers of government
they had stopped trade with the mother country.
Given those circumstances, Parliament felt compelled to prohibit all British trade with the American colonies. Further, all
American ships and cargoes were to be treated as if they belonged to an enemy power and were subject to seizure; if adjudged
a lawful prize by an admiralty court, the ships and cargoes were to be sold and the proceeds distributed among the capturing
ship’s officers and crew. This measure served as a declaration of economic warfare and did not go unnoticed in the colonies.
Congress and the individual states reacted by issuing letters of marque, which authorized individual American ship owners to
seize British ships in a practice known as privateering.