Declaration of Rights of the Stamp Act Congress

Audience

The Stamp Act Congress had as its principal targets the king, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons, each of which it had petitioned to repeal the Stamp Act. By passing its petitions and resolutions, the congress hoped to persuade Great Britain that the Stamp Act was unconstitutional and repressive. In asserting the unconstitutionality of the duties, the congress was speaking the language of English law and constitutionalism: No Englishman may be taxed without his consent. Since the colonists believed that they were not represented by Parliament, that body could hardly lay claim to authority to tax the colonies. The legal argument proceeded beyond the assertions of English law; it advanced the doctrine of natural rights and its core element of consent, an adroit maneuver that invoked universal themes. In its claim that the stamp duties were harsh and repressive, the congress wisely pitched its argument to an audience that understood practical financial matters—English merchants. The Stamp Act Congress found influential allies in British shopkeepers, manufacturers, and businessmen, all of whom relied on the Americans as valuable customers.

The Stamp Act Congress had an additional, if somewhat secondary, audience in the American colonists. The congress exercised care and caution in protecting the petitions and resolutions from the public eye before transmitting them to Great Britain, in fear that public release would suggest to the British that the aim of the congress was to appeal to the people rather than to seek relief from the king and Parliament. The congress's Declaration of Rights did enjoy great currency throughout the colonies, with colonial legislatures embracing the resolutions and adopting some of their own. The resolutions, moreover, were eminently quotable and were invoked by men up and down the coast who were outraged by the Stamp Act and, in their own ways, protested the duties imposed by the measure.

The Stamp Act Congress enjoyed another audience that it could not contemplate at that juncture: the future. The congress was highly influential in uniting American colonists and speaking a constitutional language that would become pivotal in asserting rights and liberties and demanding limitations on parliamentary power. Those arguments lit the way for American leaders to confront Great Britain over the next decade.