The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin

by H.W. Brands

However emotionally satisfying, the rejection of the stamps had little effect on Parliament, as it inflicted most of its injury on the colonies, whose influence with Parliament on this subject was demonstrably nil. Another mass action, one that hit closer to the homes of the honorable members, appeared more promising. Upon the passage of the Sugar Act the previous year, calls for an embargo against British imports arose here and there among the American colonies. But not until the Stamp Act galvanized opposition to Parliamentary taxation—and the stamp riots suggested a formidable mechanism for enforcing an embargo—did concerted nonimportation take hold. Just as the Stamp Act was to go into effect, some two hundred New York merchants pledged to have nothing to do with British imports. Philadelphia merchants followed suit, as did those of Boston. Almost immediately nonimportation evoked the desired response. British merchants petitioned Parliament for repeal of the Stamp Act. For them the niceties of constitutionalism were irrelevant; what mattered were their vanishing sales. The point of empire was profit, and without sales there would be no profits.