Definition
Charles Townshend, chancellor of the exchequer, proposed duties in 1767 on glass, lead, paint, paper, and tea that colonists imported from Britain. The money was to pay the salaries of royal governors and judges, which freed them from colonial assemblies that had controlled their pay. The acts also allowed writs of assistance, general warrants that let customs officers search almost anywhere for smuggled goods. After colonists organized boycotts, British troops arrived in Boston in 1768, and Parliament repealed every duty except the one on tea in April 1770.
Why it matters on the AP exam
Townshend chose duties on imports because some colonists, Franklin among them in 1766, had drawn a line between internal taxes like the stamp tax and external duties on trade. John Dickinson answered in Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania that Parliament could regulate trade but could not tax for revenue in any form, and the Massachusetts Circular Letter of 1768 urged the colonies to resist together. Paying officials from British revenue also threatened the assemblies' power over the purse. Questions use the acts to test causation, since the boycotts, the troops in Boston, and the Boston Massacre followed from them, and to compare them with the Stamp Act.
Connections
- Stamp Act: Parliament repealed this earlier tax in 1766, and the new duties on imports replaced it the next year
- Boston Massacre: troops sent to Boston to support customs officers were involved in the shooting in 1770
- Sons of Liberty: they helped enforce the boycott of the taxed goods
- Declaratory Act: Parliament used the power it claimed in 1766 to tax the colonies again