Dear fellow countrymen, as an honest silversmith of these British colonies, I have many grievances over the recent acts of taxation instituted by the British Parliament across the Atlantic Ocean in old England. The Navigation acts and Quartering acts in particular have really effected me, as I can no longer import my silver from other parts of the world without paying an outrageous tax on shipping, and I have had British soldiers demanding refuge every night, so much so that I can hardly run my shop and provide for them at the same time. These acts prove that the English Parliament does not truly care about the best interests of their American colonies. I believe that we must rise up and become independent of Britain and have our own government.
I am a silversmith. As most silversmiths do, I import my silver from China, and it is generally imported to the colonies by foreign merchants. With the navigation acts recently instituted, I must now pay a much higher tax to the English Government to purchase silver from their Merchants. We should be able to purchase imported goods, and export our own goods, without having to pay the British a large sum of money. My trade is suffering because the taxes make it nearly unprofitable to produce silver at all, and I am stuck using the silver of broken dishes to make new ones, which is not much at all.
The other act that I mentioned previously was the quartering act. This act states that I must provide housing and food for British soldiers. This is completely unacceptable. I am hardly able to produce enough money for myself to eat, much less provide food for several soldiers. Because of the taxes on importing and exporting, I am losing even more money than I would be, so I am poor and do not have enough bread to feed soldiers as well as myself.
The Townshed Acts have also effected me and many others greatly. The tax on tea in particular has caused a lot of pain as I have to pay an absurdly high price to get my daily tea. As previously stated, I do not have enough money to pay this tax. Like many others, I have stopped buying tea from the Brits in retaliation to this act, but I really wish it was affordable to buy tea like it used to be.
Overall, I am really unsatisfied with parliament’s government of the colonies. Many of the acts instituted by parliament have harmed myself and many others throughout the 13 colonies. The Navigation and Quartering acts in particular have effected myself, along with the Townshed acts. I firmly believe that we are able to govern ourselves, and that we should make a bold attempt to free ourselves from the rule of the selfish Europeans that think they can tax all of our goods with no consequence to themselves. Fare thee well good men, and may you have success in your ventures against Britian.