New Taxes, increase violence

Ok, first of all, you all read my last post, about how the French and Indian war affected the economy, and the situation in England. The Seven Year War doubled England's national debt, this brought a lot of troubles, and a lot of new taxes. This made the colonists very angry.

Because the economy was very bad, people in Britan were increasing taxes, so that people could help out.

Colonial merchants got rich by smuggling also, which, if you didn't know, means Moving  goods across a customs frontier, evading coustom control. In this case, they were evading taxes.
In 1764, George Grenville was the new prime minister in England. He wanted to raise money to collect money. He put in effect the Sugar Act that put a three-cent tax on molasses. He created tax collectors, and persecuted smugglers. He thought that with all of this ways, he was creating some sort of discipline on the colonists, and that they would understand that they needed to pay taxes. In early 1755, Parliament passed the Quartering Act, which required colonists to feed and house British troops in their homes. They could invade the homes of the colonists anytime, and they had to accept this. Obviously, colonists complained. wouldn't you?

Here is a small biography of George Grenville:


George Grenville

George Grenville was the second son of seven children born to Richard Grenville and his wife Hester, Countess Temple. His elder brother was Richard, Earl Temple, Lord Cobham; his sister Hester married William Pitt. Grenville was born on 14 October 1712 at Westminster in London. He was educated at Eton between 1725 and 1728, going on to Christ church, Oxford in 1730. He was called to the Bar in 1735. In 1741 he was elected as MP for Buckingham, a pocket borough of his uncle Richard, Viscount Cobham. There were only thirteen electors. In his early years in parliament, Grenville was a member of his uncle's faction whose members were known as "Cobham's Cubs" and included Pitt the Elder. This group opposed Walpole's government which fell in 1742. In 1744 Grenville entered Pelham's government but was dismissed by the Newcastle administration in 1755, only to be brought back into government in 1756 as Treasurer to the Navy.

So, anyway. On march 1765, the parliament passed another bill, this was called the Stamp Act. They taxed everything on paper. Colonists complained that they wouldn't have any money left to survive, They also argued that they didn't have any representation on the parliament, they called this "taxation without representation", They didn't want to let them impose taxes, because they thought that if they let them do it, then they would keep wanting to impose more and more taxes. British thought that the colonists were being very selfish.

As you can see, the Seven Year War brought many problems betweent the colonists and the Parliament. TAXES was the big word here.