"THE PARLIAMENT OF GREAT BRITAIN NOT ONLY MAY BUT MUST TAX THE COLONIES…": 1765 DEFENSE OF THE STAMP ACT

(AMERICAN COLONIES) (STAMP ACT) WHATELEY, Thomas. The Regulations Lately Made Concerning the Colonies, and the Taxes Imposed upon Them, Considered. London: for J. Wilkie, 1765. Octavo, modern full tree calf gilt, red leather spine label, top edge gilt; pp. 114. $4500.

First edition of this important 1765 English pamphlet defending the Stamp Act, the first direct tax by Parliament on the American colonies and the catalyst for the American Revolution, issued anonymously by Secretary of the Treasury Whately—an "arch-foe" of American patriots—proclaiming Britain's right to tax Americans, sparking colonial outrage and putting the "colonies on the road to revolution." The copy of renowned collector Frank C. Deering, with his morocco bookplate.

It is not too much to say that the "American Revolution began… with resistance to the Stamp Act" (Smith I:257); this "tax to be imposed on paper used for all manner of articles" sparked "the beginning of the end of British America" (Schama, 457-8). It was Thomas Whately, trusted Secretary of the Treasury under Grenville, who was given "the task of drawing up the Stamp Act" (Morgan & Morgan, Stamp Act Crisis, 240). The same year as its passage, Whately also "ably defended the administration in two publications, Remarks on the Budget and the more important Regulations Lately Made Concerning the Colonies, both published in January 1765. He never deviated from his declared opinions, and consequently many Americans in London came to see him as their arch-foe" (ODNB). "Virtually all historians writing about the early stages of the American Revolution have taken note of… Regulations Lately Made Concerning the Colonies," for with this pivotal work, Whately substantiated the Stamp Act in a widely applicable, "methodical and cogent… defense of British colonial policy" (Christie, "Vision of Empire," English Historical Review).

To Whately, "the Stamp Act was more than simply a tax on Britain's American colonies; it was a tax on legal and commercial transactions within those colonies… the litigiousness of American society was very much on Whately's mind when he drafted the Stamp Act," especially regarding "'the great Number of Law Suits in most of the Colonies' and the vast potential source of revenue" (Priest & du Rivage, Stamp Act). In Regulations Whately declared: "the Right of the Mother Country to impose such a Duty upon her Colonies, if duly considered, cannot be questioned… The Parliament of Great Britain not only may but must tax the Colonies, when the public Occasions require a Revenue there: The present Circumstances of the Nation require one now… it must appear proper to charge certain Stamp Duties in the Plantations to be applied towards defraying the necessary Expences of defending, protecting, and securing the British Colonies and Plantations in America" (pp. 104, 113-14)." On the issue of taxation without representation, he contended the American colonies "were 'virtually represented in Parliament.' This was because 'every Member of Parliament sits in the House, not as Representatives of his own Constituents, but as one of that august Assembly by which all the Commons of Great Britain are represented'… The fact that the colonies had their own assemblies did not, according to Whately, affect Parliament's right to levy taxes on them… Whately's idea of virtual representation met with a forceful response from Daniel Dulany" in his 1765 Considerations on the Propriety of Imposing Taxes (Yirush, 226-27): a work that also "helped to put the colonies on the road to revolution" (Johns, What Happened, 105-6). While the colonists had always recognized Parliament's right to regulate external trade, they believed that only colonial assemblies could levy taxes. By imposing the stamp tax, Parliament violated that tradition and precipitated a crisis. Although Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in 1766, ultimately "the only way for the American colonists to solve their differences with Great Britain was to tear away from it completely. Doing that meant war" (Hayes, 166).

Fine condition, very handsomely bound and with a nice provenance. Scarce and important.