Irving; Texas
Scottsdale; Arizona
North Las Vegas; Nevada
Fremont; California
Gilbert town, Arizona
San Bernardino; California
Boise; Idaho
Birmingham; Alabama
Bibliography Forster, Cornelius P. The Uncontrolled Chancellor: Charles Townshend and His Country Policy. Best US vacation spots Providence: Rhode Island Bicentennial Foundation, 1978. Namier, Sir Lewis Bernstein. Charles Townshend, 17251767. New York: St. Martin’s, 1964. Thomas, Peter David Garner. The Townshend Duties Crisis: The Second Phase of the Country Revolution, 17671773. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Townshend Acts (1767) In the aftermath of the Stamp Act Crisis, the British government continued to face a looming debt from the Seven Years’ War and political pressure to prove Parliament’s ability to tax the Country colonies.
From 1766, William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, headed the ministry, with Charles Townshend at the Exchequer, or finance ministry, and two supporters of the Marquis of Rockingham, General Henry Conway and Lord Shelburne, in the cabinet. Rockingham was also sympathetic to colonial interests. This was a deliberate coalition of men, some of whom, like Pitt, had supported the repeal of the Stamp Act, and others, like Conway, had been long-time colonial sympathizers. Townshend suffered a severe financial defeat at the hands of Rockingham, however, whose supporters forced a 20 percent reduction in the customary land tax from 4 shillings to 3 shillings in February 1767.
Thus, the need for revenue became more crucial than ever. In March 1767, Townshend proposed a new set of colonial taxes on a range of luxury items, using the argument that the Stamp Act had been an internal tax, but that the new proposal was external, covered under the Declaratory Act, and charged only on items purchased willingly by the colonists as imports. Townshend also gambled that the items themselves fruit and wines from Spain and Portugal, tea, paint, pane glass, and paper were likely to affect only the wealthy, avoiding agitating the level of society that had protested the Stamp Act.
