If Britons in Britain could not be made to pay more, perhaps Britons across the sea could be. From the east side of the Atlantic the Americans looked like the chief winners of the war, which freed them from fear of the French. They were taxed lightly by British standards, and little of what they paid went to imperial purposes, broadly construed. It certainly occurred to Grenville and others contemplating new sources of revenue that the Americans, unlike those boisterous cider-makers in Exeter, could not vote for members of Parliament. This rendered new American taxes constitutionally suspect,
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