For many years, the American colonies had been granted relative self-autonomy as a result of Britain being too busy with it's own issues, and therefore practicing Salutary Neglect. During this time, Britain imposed several acts on the colonies to gain a profit off them, like the Navigation Act, which encouraged colonies to send raw materials to England and then buy processed goods from Britain at an elevated price. Later, more acts were put in place that disallowed the colonies from producing specific material goods like hats, and forcing them to buy these items from Britain. However, the colonists took advantage of the loopholes in these acts, and were fairly unbothered by them. The policy of Salutary Neglect and the reverberations of the Glorious Rebellion had both heavily weakened Britain's grip on its North American colonies, and the colonists took the opportunity to push for self-government. Britain responded to these Patriot actions by vowing to reassert their power in the late 1940s, which started the ball rolling that eventually led to the Revolutionary War. Britain began to place restrictions and taxes on different aspects of colonial society to make up for the huge debt they were racking up due to the wars they were engaging in. The colonists and Britain fought together in the the French and Indian War, and they together forced France to give up it's territories in today's Canada and northern United States. However, after the war Britain issued the Proclamation of 1763, which angered the colonists greatly. Instead of rewarding them for helping in the success, Britain restricted the westward expansion of the colonies to set aside land for the Native Americans, and placed restrictions on fur trade, among other things. After the Molasses Act, which put a tax on any molasses bought by the colonies from anywhere other than Britain, was largely ignored, Parliament put in place the Sugar Act in 1764, which was a tax on sugar. Another tax put in place during this time was the Stamp Act of 1765, which sparked a huge amount of backlash from the colonists. This was one of the first instances of internal taxation imposed by Britain, where Britain imposed a tax on something that the colonists believed should be taxed by their own government, if at all. Benjamin Franklin, representing the colonies, proposed that since they were taxing the colonies like they were part of Britain, they should give the colonies representation in Parliament, but Parliament said they didn't need Actual Representation because they already had Virtual Representation (some of Parliament's members were trans-Atlantic