Declaratory Act
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The Declaratory Act (short title 6 George III, c. 12), was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain in 1766, during America's colonial period; one of a series of resolutions passed attempting to regulate the behavior of the colonies. American rebels had organized the Stamp Act Congress in response to the Stamp Act which called into question the right of a distant power to tax them. Thus Parliament was faced with colonies who refused to comply with their Act. The repealing of the Stamp Act came about due to a number of reasons, one of which was the protestations that had occurred in the colonies. Perhaps more important though were the protests that arose in Great Britain from the manufacturers who were suffering from the colonies' non-importation agreement. Normally the economic activity in the colonies wouldn't have had caused such an outcry, but the English economy was still suffering from its post-war depression. Another reason that the Stamp Act was repealed was the fact that Grenville, the Prime Minister who had enacted the Stamp Acts, had been replaced by Rockingham. Rockingham was more favorable towards the colonies, and furthermore he was rather antagonistic to any policy that Grenville had enacted. Rockingham invited Benjamin Franklin to speak to Parliament and he informed Parliament that the colonists were opposed to internal taxes but not external ones. This led Parliament to agree to repeal the Stamp Act on the condition that the Declaratory Act was passed.
The Declaratory Act asserted that Parliament had the "full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the colonies and people of America." The phrasing of the act was intentionally ambiguous, and although many in Parliament felt that taxes were implied in this clause, some other Parliament members and many of the colonialists did not. It is for this reason, along with the colonists' contentment that the Stamp Act had been repealed, that there was not an outcry in the colonies against the Declaratory Act when it was passed.
In less than two years, though, the Declaratory Act was put into action through another set of Acts: the Townshend Acts. Thus the Declaratory Act can be seen as a predecessor to future acts that would further incite the anger of the American colonists and eventually lead up to the American Revolutionary War
[edit] See also
- British Empire
- Colonial America
- Stamp Act
- Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham
- Townsend Acts
