At the time when the American War of Independence broke out George III. was upon the throne. He was an Englishman born and bred, and, after the earlier Georges, that in itself made a great appeal to the imagination of the English people. He was a man possessed of a great sincerity and a greater obstinacy, who lived as much as possible amongst his tenants in the country or within his own domestic circle. He evidenced, in brief, most of the virtues with many of the weaknesses of the English character. Though he displayed to a large degree the genial spirit that made men call him ‘Farmer George,’ there was also rather too much John Bull in his personality. His were the virtues of an honest, determined, rather stupid Englishman. It might be said that such a nature as this, particularly in the riotous eighteenth century, could achieve nothing but good. Unfortunately he not only ruled his family so harshly that they all turned out extremely badly, but he also tried to carry out the same attitude towards America. He scolded the colonists as though they were naughty children, and the colonists, many of whom had no acquaintance with England, and whose forebears had left the mother-country for the very good reason that they were happier out of it, met this intolerance with a bold and determined front. They naturally resented the autocratic demands of the Government; they could not tolerate the attitude of the English officers, while although they had outgrown Jacobite sympathies, they cherished no loyalty to a Hanoverian king.
In 1761 the Importation Act was passed, an attempt to enforce payment of duty, in consequence of which English ships went far to ruin trade with the West Indies. The end of the French and Indian wars had brought with it a great increase to the National Debt, and it seemed only fair to the Government that, as the conflict had been undertaken principally to guard the interests of the settlers, the cost should be shared by them. To this the colonists retorted that they too had fought, and that Canada was ample compensation to the British for any loss of capital.
In 1765 the Stamp Act was passed, ordering that all documents of every description must be printed on paper purchased from the Government.