While reports of individual acts of American resistance might stiffen Parliamentary resolve to continue the Stamp Tax, the organized boycott of British goods wounded the economy.  English merchants vigorously lobbied Parliament for its repeal. “Punish the violence but redress the grievance,” declared Pitt in Parliament.  “I think them deprived of a right; but by an authority they ought not to question.”  The tax was unconstitutional, but it was for Parliament to decide.  Baron Camden” disclaimed” any American “right to oppose acts of the legislature in a rebellious manner, even though the legislature has no right to make such acts.”  

Clearly the Stamp Act was a disaster.  The King fired the prime minister Georg Grenville and replaced him with Rockingham, much more sympathetic to the Americans.  The pro-American Whigs, temporarily in control in Parliament, now sought to end the crisis and quiet the Americans.  But as it turned out, they created a Constitutional wound that would fester and spread. 

In the end, Parliament did repeal the Stamp Tax but studiously avoided any mention of Constitutional right in the repeal.  They simply repealed the tax as “inconvenient,” bad for commerce, bad for the economy – in short bad public policy.  Instead, along with the Stamp Act’s repeal they issued the “Declaratory Act.”  The Declaratory Act’s preamble accused the colonial Assemblies of having “against Law, claimed to themselves. . . the sole and exclusive Right of imposing . . . Taxes.”  And in language that gave the American radicals their rallying point of Constitutional attack for the next 10 years, the Declaratory Act declared that Parliament alone “had, hath, and of right ought to have, full Power and authority to make Laws and Statutes to bind the Colonies and people of America . . in all Cases whatsoever.” 

Looking back, War and American Independence seem inevitable, eventually.  But repealing the Stamp Act as simply bad for business while asserting Parliament’s right to legislate and “bind” the colonies “in all cases whatsoever” provided endless Constitutional fuel to keep the fire burning, and hastened the American Revolution.  This single passage became the Constitutional sticking point that, 10 years later in 1775, finally drove England and its American colonies into all-out war.