Stamp Act Research Paper

When Lord Bute lost power in 1763, King George rose to reign and saw a large war cost needed to be taken care of, and used colonists (being British subjects) as a scapegoat to pay them off. Many Americans felt their rights had been violated and burst into protests. The first act was prime minister Grenville's sugar act. It restricted customs services salary that tended to be four times higher because of smuggling and bribery. It also reinforced taxes on molasses from other countries, which many colonists had been ignoring for years , but found a loss at doing so now. Enforcement policies let British naval officers work as customs officials. Though this act did not materialize fully, the Americans saw the British supervision as an intrusion.
In 1765, prime ministers Grenville took a step up on his revenue tax, with the Stamp Act. This act placed a tax on all paper used for official documents, such as licenses, wills, newspapers, and cargo lists for ships. All of these required a stamp to prove that the tax had been paid. Unlike the Sugar Act, the Stamp Act wasn't to regulate things within the country but just to raise money. The news of the act reached the colonists about April 1765, giving the colonists seven …show more content…
On March 5th, 1770, a crowd taunted and harassed British soldiers guarding a customs' house, with rocks and snowballs until one fired; killing five colonists. Within the same week of this "Boston Massacre", a new prime minister emerged. He persuaded parliament to repeal the duties, For the next two years, the colonist could feel some-what at peace. But this was only the calm before the storm, because a new act was before them; the Tea Act of 1773. The colonists resumed to buy the British tea, but were also smuggling Dutch tea, cutting sales for Britain. With the small fall in sales, parliament plotted to make the tea inexpensive to trick colonists into buying