Townshend Acts
Parliaments' effort to tax the colonies without the consent of the colonists, especially as enacted in the Townshend Acts of 1767 and the Tea Act of 1773, had been a major cause of the American Revolution. This act noted that those taxes had "been found by experience to occasion great uneasiness and disorders" and that his Majesty desired "to restore the peace and welfare of all his Majesty's Dominions".