uld not extract from British taxpayers already
overburdened with levies on land, imports, exports, windows, carriages,
deeds, newspapers, advertisements, cards and dice, and a hundred other
items of daily use. The land tax, for instance, was 20 percent of land
value. These were taxes parliament had levied on residents in Great
Britain but not on the colonists. Many taxes had been in effect since
an earlier war in the 1740's (King George's War). With the national
debt at a staggering L146,000,000, much of it the result of defending
interests in the New World, and several million pounds owed to American
colonies as reimbursement for maintaining troops during the war,
British taxpayers, rich and poor alike, expected relief. In fact, these
war debts forced parliament to impose additional taxes in 1763,
including a much-despised excise tax on cider. It is hardly surprising
to find most Britons agreed that in the future the Americans should be
responsible for those expenses directly attributable to maintaining the
empire in America. That future costs were to be shared seemed
politically expedient and the reasonable thing to do. Every ministry
which came to power in Britain after 1763 understood this as a national
mandate it could not ignore.

The French and Indian War produced a rather curious and very
significant by-product: the English literally rediscovered America and
Virginia. Since the late 17th Century there had been very little
personal contact between Englishmen in authority and the colony. From
1710 to 1750, the years when all was running so well, the only contact
Virginia had with English government was through her royal governor.
Most of the other royal officials in Virginia were Virginians, not
Englishmen. And, as events turned out, even the royal governors were a
thin line of communication. Governor Alexander Spotswood (1710-1722)
became a Virginia planter rather than go home to Britain; Governor Hugh
Drysdale (1722-1726) died in Williamsburg; and Governor William Gooch
(1727-1749) served in the colony for 22 years without once visiting
England. Moreover, fewer young Virginians were going to England for
their schooling, preferring to attend the College of William and Mary
or the recently opened College of New Jersey (Princeton). There were,
of course, London and Bristol tobacco merchants who knew Virginia well,
but the great increase in Virginia wealth after 1720 was partially
obscured from Englishmen because it