The Stamp Act itself isn't about the duality of freedom and tyranny. When Parliament wrote it, they weren't even thinking about this theme at all. As soon as the decree hit American shores though, that's all it was about.
It's like the act was more important for how it was interpreted than how it was intended. (That's true for a lot of things, incidentally.) So just because Parliament never intended it to be a referendum on freedom versus tyranny, that didn't matter.
Good news, though: America got a country out of it.
Questions About Freedom and Tyranny
- How much authority does a government have over its citizens? Where does the scale tip into tyranny? Did the Stamp Act do that?
- Is taxation automatically tyranny? Why or why not? How much taxation is all right? How much say should a population have in taxation?
- Had the British government given the colonists "freedom" in the Seven Years War, the colonies would have been conquered by France. Was asking them to pay for that service tyranny?
- Could the Stamp Act be changed in any minor ways to make it no longer tyrannical? Is it already fine? Is it impossible to salvage?
Chew on This
In levying a tax on the colonies without allowing them to vote on it, the British crown had gone from legitimate rule to tyranny.
The colonies were happy to reap the benefits of British rule, but as soon as the bill came due, they called it, unjustly, tyranny.