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The Townshend Acts

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The Townshend Acts
The Townshend Acts
In 1767 Charles Townshend who was the chancellor of the exchequer, created the Townshend Acts . The Townshend Acts were approved by British Parliament on June 26-June 2, 1767 and were repealed April 12, 1770. Charles Townshend proposed the program in order to raise 40,000 pounds a year so that the English parliament could cut the british land tax and this would also raise money to pay for the salaries of governors and judges. Some of the things that the Act taxed were paper, oil, lead, glass, and tea that went into American ports. Townshend knew that his program would be controversial in the colonies, but he argued that, "The superiority of the mother country can at no time be better exerted than now." The Townshend Acts were created right after the Stamp Act. The Stamp Act was the English parliament taxing stamps on the colonies and it ended by the colonies wanting to have the same rights as the english. Unlike the stamp acts, it took quite some time before the colonists were concerned about it. Soon the colonies started to boycott, this resulted in a decrease in british trade for three years which eventually lead to the Townshend Acts being repealed by the prime minister. The Townshend Acts led to the Boston Massacre which was The Boston Massacre happened on March 5, 1770 when the british army killed five civilians when taxes where being collected. Another result of the Townshend Acts was the reorganization of the Sons of Liberty. Merchants and smugglers in the colonies organized boycotts to put pressure Brittan to repeal the Townshend Acts.The townshend acts were finally repealed on the 5 of March 1770, the same day as the Boston Massacre. The Prime Minister presented a motion in the House of Commons that called for partial repeal of the Townshend Revenue Act. Although some in Parliament wanted a complete repeal of the act but the prime minister disagreed arguing that the tea duty should be retained to assert

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