37. Passage of the Townshend Acts

The Mutiny Act was one of the lesser of the major irritants imposed by the Pitt-Townshend administration. In early 1767, Townshend, with the consent of Pitt, decided to crack down on the Americans by making use of Franklin’s strained distinction between internal and external taxation of the colonies. Townshend decided to levy “external” duties on the colonies, and to execute the law by ending salutary neglect and by instituting measures to enforce imperial customs and trade regulations. These were the “Townshend Acts” of 1767, which were passed at the end of June and which would become effective on November 20. Designed to bring in forty thousand pounds annually, the most fateful of these acts imposed new import duties on glass, lead, paint, paper, and tea. This money would be used to quarter British troops in the colonies, but primarily it would go for increased “support of civil government”—an obvious threat to the jealously guarded power of the colonial assemblies to appropriate the salaries of the executive officials.

To ease complaints against the heavy tax burdens in England, and to expand English power over the colonies, Townshend had decided to make use of the internal-external dichotomy. After all, he reasoned, if Americans, as he thought, could believe in this absurd distinction, let Britain make good use of this foolishness. Such proved to be the folly of England’s taking Benjamin Franklin as representing the American people!

Parliament, piqued at the Americans and eager to shift tax burdens onto others, overwhelmingly supported the Townshend Acts; indeed, the chief opposition came from the Tories, led by Grenville, who argued against the acts for not going far enough. Among the Whigs, Edmund Burke, at this time one of their leaders in Parliament, led the opposition from the liberal side; he astutely pointed out that the acts were not essentially different from the stamp duties and that the Americans would resist the former as they did the latter.

As a companion to the new duties, another Townshend Act radically increased the enforcement powers of British officialdom. Until this time, the various customs collectors and surveyors had been loosely controlled by commissioners of the customs in England. Now a new five-man American Board of Commissioners of the Customs was established at Boston, to exercise direct central control of American customs and trade act enforcement. The idea for the customs board had been given to Townshend by his protégé, Charles Paxton, surveyor of Boston, marshal of its vice admiralty court, and one of the newly appointed commissioners. Another Townshend Act authorized the appointed supreme courts of the colonies to issue writs of assistance—general search warrants—to enforce the customs regulations. A companion measure, to increase the effectiveness of admiralty-court enforcement, took effect the following year; it expanded the number of super vice admiralty courts from the single Halifax court to four, each of which would have both original and appellate jurisdiction in its own region. These courts were now located at Halifax, Boston, Philadelphia, and Charleston.