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Cheers and have a safe tomorrow. Hello and thank you for joining the American Revolution.

Today episode 27, Prime Minister Pitt falls from power.

Last week, things started looking like they would go the right way for the colonies.

Their hero, William Pitt, now Lord Chatham, had become Prime Minister. Pitt had always been one of the leading advocates in Parliament for colonial rights.

He had spoken forcefully in favor of colonial freedoms

and had been a tireless advocate for colonial rights throughout all the efforts to tax them.

Before that, Pitt had been the man who got the colonies all that money during the French and Indian War,

turning around all the problems they had and getting the colonies to cooperate

with the army in making Canada part of the British Empire.

So when the Pitt administration passed the Townsend Acts, it looked like the colony's biggest

advocates believe these new tariffs were reasonable. The colonists greeted the

Townsend Acts with caution. They were not terribly happy about them, but also were not

sufficiently outraged to march in the streets as they did with the Stamp Act.

There were several reasons for this. First, as I've said, the towns and duties were not internal taxes.

Even though they were clearly designed to raise revenues they met the demands of the

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