The expectation of a rupture with the colonies...has struck the people of Great Britain with more terror than they ever felt for the Spanish Armada...It was this terror...which rendered the repeal of the Stamp Act, among the merchants at least, a popular measure.”
– Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Cause of the Wealth of Nations
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- Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The Merchants of London
At eleven o’clock on the morning of March 17, 1766 London merchants boarded fi ft y coaches and traveled as a caravan to the House of Lords. Th at morning they had approved a petition to King George III to accept Parliament’s vote repealing the Stamp Act. Th e following day the twenty-seven year old king agreed. Reports of violent protest across colonial America, the impossibility of unloading stamps, and the damaging boycott of British goods had been decisive.
Celebration
News of repeal reached Boston with the arrival of the brigantine Harrison, on May 16th. London merchants had sent word on one of John Hancock’s ships. It was a piece of luck. Many thought that Hancock was responsible for repeal. Perhaps he thought so himself. There was universal rejoicing. Church bells pealed, and guns fired. John Hancock paid for fireworks on Boston Common and for the release of every person in debtors’ prison. He set out casks of Madeira wine in front of his Beacon Hill home.
- New York Historical Society
Afterword
The joy was short lived because Parliament quickly approved the Declaratory Act reiterating its right to tax the colonies. The Stamp Act crisis was a beginning, not an end. It defined the issues that would lead to the American Revolution, “taxation without representation” and the need for a democratic government that would protect rights. During the crisis several figures stepped out of the provincial shadows and onto the historical stage. They presented a world-view that is still revolutionary today.
What’s in a word? Boycott
Samuel Adams used the term Non-Importation Agreement.
The word ‘boycott” originated in Ireland in 1880 when
tenant farmers used this strategy against estate agent
Charles C. Boycott to protest high rents.