Without consulting his Cabinet colleagues or giving them any notice of his intention, Townshend proposed a series of customs duties on imports into America of glass, paint, lead, paper and all grades of tea for the stated purpose not of controlling trade but of raising revenue. The expected return according to his own calculations was £20,000 from the tea duty and a little less than £20,000 from the rest, altogether £40,000, amounting to a tenth of the total cost of governing the colonies and less than a tenth of the loss from the reduced land tax. For this pittance, which would barely reduce
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