History of the United States I / Unit 5 USH1 0618 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
What the Townshend Money Actually Paid For
The idea
The true purpose went beyond revenue. The funds paid the salaries of royally appointed judges, governors and officials whom colonial assemblies had traditionally compensated. That freed those officials from dependence on colonial legislatures, and let them enforce parliamentary acts without fear that their salaries would be withheld. An assembly that could no longer withhold pay could no longer restrain a governor, and the power the colonies had actually exercised for decades was the power of the purse.
In practice
A duty on paint and glass quietly dismantling the leverage colonial assemblies held over royal officials.
Where people slip
This is the entry to hold onto. The colonial objection was never the amount of the tax, which was small, but what the revenue was for. Teaching Townshend as a dispute over cost misses the constitutional mechanism the colonists could see and reduces a fight over self-government to a complaint about prices.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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