Eye on History

Glen Hancock



Canadians have been accustomed to the annual one-penny increase in the price of regular postage stamps, and this year, for the first time since Canada’s first postage stamp was issued in 1851, the price has been omitted. This confirms that stamps will continue to go up on an annual basis, but it also adds an unusual consideration, that previous year’s stamps will be honoured until they run out.

Colonists in the American colonies in 1765 were not so complacent about the price of stamps and their use, and the infamous Stamp Act of that year was one of the reasons for the American Revolution.

A few years later in Boston, the protest against the British tea tax added fuel to the impending revolt. The Americans, imbued as they were with a republican philosophy, would have fought for their freedom from British rule in any event, but the Stamp Act and the tax on tea brought it on sooner.

The Stamp Act was the first tax ever to be laid on the colonies by the British parliament. It was bad judgment on the part of the bureaucrats in London and it was also unconstitutional, because the Americans were not represented in the government that declared the tax. The crown had already conceded to the colonies the power to make their own laws and tax themselves. The British government may have been hard up at the time due to its military presence in the New World, but economic arguments in favour of the act were invalid.

The tax was to be paid in sterling and on almost every kind of legal paper. School and college diplomas, for instance, were liable to a tax of two pounds, represented by a stamp of that value. Advertisements in newspapers were taxed. Liquor licenses, lawyers’ licenses to practice and land deeds were included. Every copy of a newspaper had to pay half-a-penny for every sheet, and playing cards required a shilling stamp for every pack. Even dice were taxed 16 shillings a pair.

The colonists acted as might have been expected. (On the eve of the revolution, British authorities demonstrated their arrogance and lack of appreciation for the colonists by opening and reading private mail, if they thought it contained seditious information. We are still dealing with the principle as to how much we are prepared to restrict human rights against the need for national security).

Violence broke out in Boston, as it would again because of the tea tax.

Postal communication was, of course, important to the new colonies. Rates were based on distance traveled and the number of sheets contained in letters, but eventually weight rather than distance would determine the rate.

The Stamp Act applied to all the British colonies overseas, including the Caribbean area and Canada. Although the Canadians were not particularly interested in breaking away from British rule, they reacted violently to the tax. The press condemned the act in Halifax and a mob erected a gibbet on Citadel Hill from which were suspended two effigies, one of the devil and the other of the local stamp officer.

There was jubilation on July 3, 1776 when Nova Scotians were informed the act had been repealed. The following day, the Declaration of Independence was signed and the 13 colonies began a journey toward their own destiny.

Curiously, the use of stamps on certain kinds of documents continued in Nova Scotia right up to the beginning of World War II. It was necessary to place a stamp – the value being consistent with the regular postage stamp, which in the ‘20s and ‘30s was three cents – on every bank cheque written and on the bank drafts. They were not valid without the stamp.

Nova Scotians did not resist and, in time, the practice disappeared.