Declaratory Act
Parliament repealed the Stamp Act and asserted an unlimited right to legislate for the colonies on the same day. The repeal was carried on commercial grounds. British exports to America had fallen by about fifteen per cent under the non-importation agreements, merchants in London, Bristol and Glasgow petitioned, and Rockingham's ministry needed a way out. What it could not do was concede the principle, since a repeal on the colonial argument would have conceded that Parliament's authority stopped at the water. The Declaratory Act therefore states that Parliament had, hath, and of right ought to have full power and authority to make laws and statutes to bind the colonies and people of America in all cases whatsoever. The wording was lifted from the Irish Declaratory Act of 1719 and everyone in the chamber knew it. Pitt had argued in the debates that the colonies were right about internal taxation and wrong to deny parliamentary sovereignty in general, which is a distinction the act deliberately refuses. The colonies celebrated the repeal, put up a statue of the king in New York, and largely ignored the act as a face-saving formula. That was a misreading. Every subsequent measure — the Townshend duties, the tea, the Coercive Acts — was enacted on the authority the Declaratory Act asserted, and by 1774 the argument was no longer about taxes but about whether the words in all cases whatsoever meant anything. Both sides eventually agreed that they did. Burke defended the act years later on the ground that a sovereign power must assert its sovereignty and would be wise never to use it, which is the most sophisticated position anyone took and satisfied nobody at the time.
- Year: 1766 CE
- Category: Political
