Charles Townshend

Charles Townshend was the British chancellor of the exchequer whose revenue scheme of 1767 did more than any other single measure to push the American colonies towards revolt. He was the second son of a viscount, educated at Leiden, and moved through the Board of Trade, the Admiralty and the paymastership before reaching the exchequer. He was regarded as the most brilliant speaker of his generation and the least reliable man in politics; his nickname was Champagne Charlie, after a celebrated speech delivered while drunk. Parliament had repealed the Stamp Act in 1766 after colonial resistance, while asserting in the Declaratory Act that it retained the right to tax the colonies. Townshend set out to exercise that right in a form he believed the colonists could not object to. Americans had drawn a distinction between internal taxes and external duties on trade, so he taxed imports: glass, lead, paint, paper and tea. The revenue was earmarked to pay colonial governors and judges, which removed them from the financial control of the colonial assemblies. That was the part that mattered. The colonies did not accept his distinction, non-importation agreements spread, and troops were sent to Boston to enforce collection, leading to the Boston Massacre in 1770. Townshend never saw any of it. He died of a fever in September 1767, weeks after his acts passed, aged forty-two. All the duties except the one on tea were repealed in 1770. Edmund Burke, who admired and distrusted him, said he had a genius for pleasing an assembly and no principle to steady it. The measures that carry his name outlived him by a decade and cost Britain an empire in North America.

• Lived: 1725 CE – 1767 CE
• Nationality: British
• Roles: politician