... liberating their colonies, suppressed them. After the French and Indian war, England needed a way to repay debts. They looked toward the colonies, to start generating revenue for the mother country instead of for themselves. England used several taxes, laws, and acts to make this possible, several influential measures were the Mercantile system, the stamp tax, and the Intolerable acts. “The British Empire was erected on the then-popular theory of mercantilism, which held that colonies existed for the benefit of the mother country.” (Bailey 92) The Mercantile system was certainly not a new idea, it was already used by French and Spanish as a way of profiting m ...