Stamp Act :: American History, Tax

The Stamp spiel was passed by the British sevens 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. Ships 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 comprises 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 subscribe attempt by England to raise money in the colonies without the approval of the colonial legislatures. If thi s new tax were allowed to pass without resistance, the colonists reasoned, the door would be open for far much 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 Henrys Stamp Act resolves. These resolves declared that Americans possessed the uniform 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.