Description
- Abstract:
- Though Britain triumphed in the Seven Years War with France (1756-1763), it emerged from the conflict with a severe fiscal deficit. To close the deficit, Parliament announced its intention to impose new taxes on American colonies, including a duty on imported sugar and molasses. The proposal provoked a wave of protests against "taxation without representation," which culminated in the American Declaration of Independence in 1776. Rhode Islanders, whose economy depended on the traffic in sugar, molasses, and rum, played a leading role in colonial opposition. In 1764, local merchants drafted the "Rhode Island Remonstrance," which was carried personally to London by Stephen Hopkins, the colony's governor and chancellor of the newly created College of Rhode Island, what is today Brown University. After his return from England, Hopkins published this pamphlet, The Rights of Colonies Examined, which established the basic terms of colonial opposition to Parliamentary taxation. Those who paid taxes levied without their consent, Hopkins asserted, were "in the miserable condition of slaves" - "the heaviest curse human nature is capable of." Hopkins was himself a slaveowner at the time. The Brown brothers forwarded a copy of the pamphlet to Hopkins's younger brother Esek, who was then on the coast of Africa aboard the slave ship Sally.
- Notes:
- Attributed to Stephen Hopkins by Alden
- Signed on p. 24: P------. Providence, in New-England, November 30, 1764
Access Conditions
- Rights
- No Copyright - United States
- Restrictions on Use
- Collection is open for research.
Citation
Hopkins, Stephen,
"The rights of colonies examined"
(1765).
Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:303438/
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Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice
An archive of a wide array of historical documents, from the records of slaving voyages to student commencement orations, digitized in support of the work of the University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice. The collection contains over one hundred …...