The Sugar Act

Grenville’s problem with trying to use trade laws to extract more revenue from Americans

• Smuggling

• Customs officers frequently corrupt

• Americans evaded most of customs duties as a result

Grenville anti-smuggling measures in 1763

• Colonial customs officials - must reside in America, rather than delegating their duties to deputies (and going back to England)

• Jurisdiction in revenue cases was transferred from colonial courts to a vice-admiralty court in Halifax, Nova Scotia - here the judge alone would hand down the verdict, no jury - this was to counter the leniency of colonial juries towards smugglers

When was the Sugar Act and Currency Act?

1764

What was the Sugar Act in a nutshell?

A collection of changes to customs duties on foreign goods, which amended the Molasses Act of 1733

Terms of the Sugar Act

• Halved the duty on foreign molasses (from 6d to 3d per gallon)

• Theoretically beneficial to New England rum distilleries - however, the previous higher duty was largely ignored by officials

• The new lower duty, properly enforced, was expected to raise more than its predecessor

• Increased import duties on non-British goods that passed through England on their way to the colonies (enumerated commodities): sugar, wine, silk, coffee, indigo, animal hides, iron

• Import on French rum and wine prohibited

• To be strictly enforced - customs officials fined £500 and disqualified from office for breaches

The Board of Customs commissioners advised that Sugar Act, enforced, would yield how much?

£78,000 per year

Parliament response to Sugar Act

• Virtually no opposition in Parliament

• Most MPs complacent about situation in American colonies

• No sustained American pressure group in Parliament - only 5 Americans sat in Commons 1763-1783

• Few British politicians anticipated resistance, also as it only affected New England, where distillers turned molasses into rum

What was the Currency Act in a nutshell?

Prohibited the issue of any new colonial paper money

Terms of the Currency Act

• If colonial assemblies issued their own currency (in violation of Act), such legislation was to be considered null and void - any colonial governor who allowed this would be fined, sacked and disqualified from holding any public office in future

• Deflationary effects on the already depressed post-war American economy - meant some people had insufficient money to buy goods or to invest

• Mostly aimed at Virginia, who had issued lots of paper money during 7 Years’ War

American response in a nutshell

Angered many colonists - kindled their suspicions, New England merchants aggrieved by Sugar Act, challenged colonial legal system, deflationary effects of Currency Act also felt

American suspicions

• Britain was essentially taxing Americans who were unrepresented in Parliament

• Regarded themselves as good Whigs - believed in popular rights and disliked despotism

• Many Americans convinced of the need to guard against attempts to expand executive power by stealth - influence of Earl of Bute (even if not PM), and large peacetime army stationed in colonies

What was American Whiggism?

• American Whiggism in the 1760s was that of the first English Whigs who had come to prominence when England seemed to be sliding towards despotism under Charles II and James II

• Resisting arbitrary power (power that is not bound by rules, allowing monarchs to do as they wish), upholding political rights and defending the integrity of representative institutions

• Supported writings of early eighteenth-century British radical Whigs (1720s) - these condemned ministers for conspiring to undermine traditional freedoms

John Wilkes’ influence

• John Wilkes was a radical British MP

• Was also the co-editor of the journal North Briton

• Demanded freedom of the press and a more democratic Parliament

• 1763 - criticised the King and accused his ministers of being ‘the tools of despotism and corruption’

• Arrested + imprisoned

• Soon released but subsequently convicted of libel and fled to France

• Sign that British gov. also trampling on British freedoms (as well as American) - British and American hero

By 1765 how many colonial assemblies had sent messages to London arguing that Parliament had abused its power by introducing the Sugar Act?

Nine colonial assemblies - accepted Parliament’s right to regulate trade, but did not accept its right to tax in order to raise revenue in America

Example of colonist who objected to Sugar Act at the Boston Town Meeting May 1764

Samuel Adams, at this meeting, commented on how the colonists’ rights as British people (‘natives of Britain’) were violated, and compared the colonists to slaves. He also voices the idea of ‘no taxation without representation’, and how the Sugar and Currency Acts annihilated the colonists’ ‘Charter Right’ to govern and tax themselves.

Name a colonist who wrote pamphlets against Sugar Act

• James Otis - a member of a prominent Massachusetts family

• Published an influential pamphlet in 1764, The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved

• In this he criticised Parliament’s new aggressiveness towards the colonies, asserted there should be no taxation in America without the people’s consent

Did most Americans comply with Sugar Act in the end?

Yes - despite the objections of assemblies and Pamphleteers, few were actually directly affected by it, so most Americans complied with it