ABSTRACT
George Grenville's policy of taxing America undoubtedly accorded with the views of the majority in Great Britain. The late war had been burdensome to the mother-country, whereas it's most obvious advantage came to the American colonists, who were delivered from their long nightmare of French aggression. Ever since Charles II's reign, during the long period of Whig supremacy, relations with the colonies had been governed by what Grenville called 'that palladium of British commerce', the Acts of Navigation. By these Acts, passed on the sole authority of Parliament, colonial manufactures were restrained, duties imposed, and bounties given on colonial as well as home products, and regulations laid down for navigation in home and colonial waters. The colonists felt no grievance in the regulations, which seemed indispensable to William Pitt for the union of the Empire's component parts: they resented direct taxation by Parliament as an unpardonable invasion of their liberties.
