Normally the economic activity in the colonies would not have caused such an outcry, but the British economy was still experiencing a post-war depression from the Seven Years' War.

Rockingham invited Benjamin Franklin to speak to Parliament about colonial policy and he portrayed the colonists as in opposition to internal taxes (which were derived from internal colonial transactions) such as the Stamp Act called for, but not external taxes (which were duties laid on imported commodities).

[4] The political theorist Edward Mims described the American reaction to the Declaratory Act: When in 1766 this modernised British Parliament, committed by now to the principle of parliamentary sovereignty unlimited and unlimitable, issued a declaration that a parliamentary majority could pass any law it saw fit, it was greeted with an out-cry of horror in the colonies.

James Otis and Samuel Adams in Massachusetts, Patrick Henry in Virginia and other colonial leaders along the seaboard screamed "Treason" and "Magna Carta"!

Such a doctrine, they insisted, demolished the essence of all their British ancestors had fought for, took the very savour out of that fine Anglo-Saxon liberty for which the sages and patriots of England had died.