4 1 England tells us colonists the cost of the French and Indian War was high The Seven Years War as they called it in England dragged on and on against the French finally ending in 1763 In the end England won the war and gained French Canada Spanish Florida and parts of India Now Parliament needs us to pay taxes Ann Clerk Colonial Merchant’s Wife
5 to cover the cost of sending British soldiers here to defend the colonies and frontiers This makes perfect sense to me Taxes are paid in England and our American men pay taxes that are collected by our own elected assemblies We should also pay for the protection offered by these soldiers But some colonists feel no need to pay the taxes or duties the British Parliament collects They have smuggled goods tax free for a long time without penalty I like many here in the colonies remain loyal to England and my king Aren’t we of English stock My great-grandparents were born in England And the British soldiers did us service They protected us from the raids of the French and their Indian allies It is reasonable that we should pay for that protection through taxes to Parliament Determine the main point of this paragraph and pick out one piece of evidence that supports it Think about It
6 Others don’t agree with me though When the British Parliament enacted the Stamp Act back in 1765 there was an uproar The law put a tax on all printed material from newspapers to playing cards These items were stamped as proof that the tax was paid It was the first time we colonists had been taxed directly by England Before only our local legislatures here in the colonies had directly taxed us There was great outcry against taxation without representation You see colonists have no representatives in the British Parliament People found it unfair that Parliament could vote to tax us when colonists did not have a voice in Parliament I doubt the protesters would have been happy if we had been given representation It was the tax they hated money out of their greedy pockets SECOND SOURCE Find another source on the Stamp Act and compare the information provided there to the information in this source
