The Taxation of Colonies Act 1778 was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain under the order

King George III George III (George William Frederick; 4 June 173829 January 1820) was King of Great Britain and of Ireland from 25 October 1760 until the union of the two kingdoms on 1 January 1801, after which he was King of the United Kingdom of Great Br ...

that declared Parliament would not impose any duty, tax, or assessment for the raising of revenue in any of the colonies of British America or the

British West Indies The British West Indies (BWI) were colonized British territories in the West Indies: Anguilla, the Cayman Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands, Montserrat, the British Virgin Islands, Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Dominica, Grena ...

. The Act, passed during the

American Revolutionary War The American Revolutionary War (April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783), also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, was a major war of the American Revolution. Widely considered as the war that secured the independence of t ...

, was an attempt by Parliament to end the war by conceding one of the early points of dispute.Reid, ''Authority to Tax'', 51. Parliament's effort to tax the colonies without the consent of the colonists, especially as enacted in the

Townshend Acts The Townshend Acts () or Townshend Duties, were a series of British acts of Parliament passed during 1767 and 1768 introducing a series of taxes and regulations to fund administration of the British colonies in America. They are named after the ...

of 1767 and the

Tea Act The Tea Act 1773 (13 Geo 3 c 44) was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain. The principal objective was to reduce the massive amount of tea held by the financially troubled British East India Company in its London warehouses and to help th ...

of 1773, had been a major cause of the

American Revolution The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revoluti ...

. This act noted that those taxes had "been found by experience to occasion great uneasiness and disorders"Houston, ''Documents'', 104. and that his Majesty desired "to restore the peace and welfare of all his Majesty's Dominions". The Act declared that Parliament would not impose any duty, tax, or assessment for the raising of revenue in any of the colonies. Parliament would only impose such duties as expedient to regulate commerce and the net income from these duties would be given to the colonies. In making this concession, Parliament was taking the position that American colonists had advocated a decade earlier, most notably

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in his 1767 and 1768 "

Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania ''Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania'' is a series of essays written by the Pennsylvania lawyer and legislator John Dickinson (1732–1808) and published under the pseudonym "A Farmer" from 1767 to 1768. The twelve letters were widely read and r ...

". By the time the statute was enacted, it was too late to have any effect on the war: the dispute was no longer specifically about taxation, and the colonies had already declared independence. Additionally, according to legal historian John Phillip Reid, "As a matter of constitutional law the statute was meaningless", because future Parliaments would not be bound by the current Parliament's pledge not to impose taxes. The Act was eventually repealed by the Statute Law (Repeals) Act 1973 as obsolete.

References

{{British law and the American Revolution Great Britain Acts of Parliament 1778 British laws relating to the American Revolution Tax legislation in the United Kingdom Repealed Great Britain Acts of Parliament