Background
The Molasses Act 1733 was passed by Parliament largely at the insistence of large plantation owners in the British West Indies. Molasses from French, Dutch, and Spanish West Indian possessions was inexpensive. Producers of sugar from the British West Indies priced sugar much higher than their competitors, and they had no need for the large quantities of lumber, fish, and other items offered by the colonies in exchange. Sometimes colonists would pay Molasses Act taxes because they were rather low depending on where they resided and how much money they had. In the first part of the 18th century, the British West Indies were Great Britain's most important trading partner, so Parliament was attentive to their requests. However, rather than acceding to their demands to prohibit the colonies from trading with the non-British islands, Parliament passed a prohibitively high tax on the colonies on molasses imported from those islands. If actually collected, the tax would have effectively closed that source to New England and destroyed much of the rum industry. Instead, smuggling, bribery or intimidation of customs officials effectively nullified the law. [5]
During the Seven Years' War, known in Colonial America as the French and Indian War, the British government substantially increased the national debt to pay for the war. In February 1763, as the war ended, the ministry headed by John Stuart, the Earl of Bute, decided to maintain a standing army of ten thousand British regular troops in the colonies. Shortly thereafter, George Grenville replaced Bute. Grenville supported his predecessor's policy, even more so after the outbreak of Pontiac's War in May 1763. Grenville faced the problem of not only paying for these troops but servicing the national debt. The debt grew from £75,000,000 before the war to £122,600,000 in January 1763, and almost £130,000,000 by the beginning of 1764. [6]
George Grenville did not expect the colonies to contribute to the interest or the retirement of the debt, but he did expect the Americans to pay a portion of the expenses for colonial defense. Estimating the expenses of maintaining an army in the Continental colonies and the West Indies to be approximately £200,000 annually, Grenville devised a revenue-raising program that would raise an estimated £79,000 per year. [7]
Passage
The Molasses Act was set to expire in 1763. The Commissioners of Customs anticipated greater demand for both molasses and rum as a result of the end of the war and the acquisition of Canada. They believed that the increased demand would make a sharply reduced rate both affordable and collectible. When passed by Parliament, the new Sugar Act of 1764 halved the previous tax on molasses. In addition to promising stricter enforcement, the language of the bill made it clear that the purpose of the legislation was not to simply regulate the trade (as the Molasses Act had attempted to do by effectively closing the legal trade to non-British suppliers) but to raise revenue. [3]
The new act listed specific goods, the most important being lumber, which could only be exported to Britain. Ship captains were required to maintain detailed manifests of their cargo and the papers were subject to verification before anything could be unloaded from the ships. Customs officials were empowered to have all violations tried in vice admiralty courts rather than by jury trials in local colonial courts, where the juries generally looked favourably on smuggling as a profession. [8]
American historian Fred Anderson wrote that the purpose of the Act was "to resolve the problems of finance and control that plagued the postwar empire". To do this "three kinds of measures" were implemented – "those intended to make customs enforcement more effective, those that placed new duties on items widely consumed in America, and those that adjusted old rates in such a way as to maximize revenues." [9]
Effect on the American colonies
The Sugar Act was passed by Parliament on 5 April 1764, [1] and it arrived in the colonies at a time of economic depression. A good part of the reason was that a significant portion of the colonial economy during the Seven Years' War was involved with supplying food and supplies to the British Army. Colonials, however, especially those affected directly as merchants and shippers, assumed that the highly visible new tax program was the major culprit. As protests against the Sugar Act developed, it was the economic impact rather than the constitutional issue of taxation without representation that was the main focus for the colonists. [10]
New England ports especially suffered economic losses from the Sugar Act as the stricter enforcement made smuggling molasses more dangerous and risky. Also they argued that the profit margin on rum was too small to support any tax on molasses. Forced to increase their prices, many colonists feared being priced out of the market. The British West Indies, on the other hand, now had unrestricted exports. With supply of molasses well exceeding demand, the islands prospered with their reduced expenses while New England ports saw revenue from their rum exports decrease. Also the West Indies had been the primary colonial source for hard currency, or specie, and as the reserves of specie were depleted the soundness of colonial currency was threatened. [11]
Two prime movers behind the protests against the Sugar Act were Samuel Adams and James Otis, both of Massachusetts. In May 1764 Samuel Adams drafted a report on the Sugar Act for the Massachusetts assembly, in which he denounced the act as an infringement of the rights of the colonists as British subjects:
For if our Trade may be taxed why not our Lands? Why not the Produce of our Lands & every thing we possess or make use of? This we apprehend annihilates our Charter Right to govern & tax ourselves – It strikes our British Privileges, which as we have never forfeited them, we hold in common with our Fellow Subjects who are Natives of Britain: If Taxes are laid upon us in any shape without our having a legal Representation where they are laid, are we not reduced from the Character of free Subjects to the miserable State of tributary Slaves? [12]
In August 1764, fifty Boston merchants agreed to stop purchasing British luxury imports, and in both Boston and New York City there were movements to increase colonial manufacturing. There were sporadic outbreaks of violence, most notably in Rhode Island. [13] Overall, however, there was not an immediate high level of protest over the Sugar Act in either New England or the rest of the colonies. That would begin in the later part of the next year when the Stamp Act 1765 was passed. [14]
The Sugar Act 1764 was repealed in 1766 and replaced with the Revenue Act 1766, which reduced the tax to one penny per gallon on molasses imports, British or foreign. This occurred around the same time that the Stamp Act 1765 was repealed. [15]
The American Revolution was a rebellion and political movement in the Thirteen Colonies which peaked when colonists initiated an ultimately successful war for independence against the Kingdom of Great Britain. Leaders of the American Revolution were colonial separatist leaders who originally sought more autonomy as British subjects, but later assembled to support the Revolutionary War, which ended British colonial rule over the colonies, establishing their independence as the United States of America in July 1776.
The Thirteen Colonies were a group of British colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America during the 17th and 18th centuries. Grievances against the imperial government led the 13 colonies to begin uniting in 1774, and expelling British officials by 1775. Assembled at the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia, after armed conflict had broken out in April, they appointed George Washington as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army to fight the American Revolutionary War. In 1776, Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence as the United States of America and, asserting its sovereignty, the United States allied with Britain's enemy France. Defeating British armies with its French ally, the former Thirteen Colonies had its sovereignty recognized by Britain in the Treaty of Paris in 1783.
The Stamp Act 1765, also known as the Duties in American Colonies Act 1765, was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain which imposed a direct tax on the British colonies in America and required that many printed materials in the colonies be produced on stamped paper from London which included an embossed revenue stamp. Printed materials included legal documents, magazines, playing cards, newspapers, and many other types of paper used throughout the colonies, and it had to be paid in British currency, not in colonial paper money.
The Navigation Acts, or more broadly the Acts of Trade and Navigation, were a long series of English laws that developed, promoted, and regulated English ships, shipping, trade, and commerce with other countries and with its own colonies. The laws also regulated England's fisheries and restricted foreign—including Scottish and Irish—participation in its colonial trade. While based on earlier precedents, they were first enacted in 1651 under the Commonwealth.
The Intolerable Acts, sometimes referred to as the Insufferable Acts or Coercive Acts, were a series of five punitive laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 after the Boston Tea Party. The laws aimed to punish Massachusetts colonists for their defiance in the Tea Party protest of the Tea Act, a tax measure enacted by Parliament in May 1773. In Great Britain, these laws were referred to as the Coercive Acts. They were a key development leading to the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War in April 1775.
The American Colonies Act 1766, commonly known as the Declaratory Act, was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain which accompanied the repeal of the Stamp Act 1765 and the amendment of the Sugar Act. Parliament repealed the Stamp Act because boycotts were hurting British trade and used the declaration to justify the repeal and avoid humiliation. The declaration stated that the Parliament's authority was the same in America as in Britain and asserted Parliament's authority to pass laws that were binding on the American colonies.
The Townshend Acts or Townshend Duties were a series of British acts of Parliament passed during 1767 and 1768 introducing a series of taxes and regulations to enable administration of the British colonies in America. They are named after the Chancellor of the Exchequer who proposed the programme. Historians vary slightly as to which acts they include under the heading "Townshend Acts", but five are often listed:
The Stamp Act Congress, also known as the Continental Congress of 1765, was a meeting held in New York City in the colonial Province of New York. It included representatives from most of the British colonies in North America, which sought a unified strategy against newly imposed taxes by the British Parliament, particularly the Stamp Act. It was the second such gathering of elected colonial representatives after the Albany Convention of 1754 at the outbreak of the French and Indian War. Massive debts from that war, which ended in 1763, prompted the British Parliament to implement measures to raise revenues from the colonies. The Stamp Act required the use of specialty stamped British paper for all legal documents, newspapers, almanacks, and calendars, and even playing cards and dice. When in force, it would have an impact on practically all business in the colonies, starting on November 1, 1765. Resistance to it came especially from lawyers and businessmen, but was broadly protested by ordinary colonial residents.
"No taxation without representation" is a political slogan that originated in the American Revolution, and which expressed one of the primary grievances of the American colonists for Great Britain. In short, many colonists believed that as they were not represented in the distant British parliament, any taxes it imposed on the colonists were unconstitutional and were a denial of the colonists' rights as Englishmen since the Magna Carta.
The Currency Act or Paper Bills of Credit Act is one of several Acts of the Parliament of Great Britain that regulated paper money issued by the colonies of British America. The Acts sought to protect British merchants and creditors from being paid in depreciated colonial currency. The policy created tension between the colonies and Great Britain and was cited as a grievance by colonists early in the American Revolution. However, the consensus view among modern economic historians and economists is that the debts by colonists to British merchants were not a major cause of the Revolution. In 1995, a random survey of 178 members of the Economic History Association found that 92% of economists and 74% of historians disagreed with the statement, "The debts owed by colonists to British merchants and other private citizens constituted one of the most powerful causes leading to the Revolution."
The Gaspee affair was a significant event in the lead-up to the American Revolution. HMS Gaspee was a Royal Navy revenue schooner that enforced the Navigation Acts around Newport, Rhode Island, in 1772. It ran aground in shallow water while chasing the packet boat Hannah on June 9 off of Warwick, Rhode Island. A group of men led by Abraham Whipple and John Brown I attacked, boarded, and burned the Gaspee to the waterline.
The Massachusetts Circular Letter was a statement written by Samuel Adams and James Otis Jr., and passed by the Massachusetts House of Representatives in February 1768 in response to the Townshend Acts. Reactions to the letter brought heightened tensions between the British Parliament and Massachusetts, and resulted in the military occupation of Boston by the British Army, which contributed to the coming of the American Revolution.
The concept of virtual representation was that the members of the UK Parliament, including the Lords and the Crown-in-Parliament, reserved the right to speak for the interests of all British subjects, rather than for the interests of only the district that elected them or for the regions in which they held peerages and spiritual sway. Virtual representation was the British response to the First Continental Congress in the American colonies. The Second Continental Congress asked for representation in Parliament in the Suffolk Resolves, also known as the first Olive Branch Petition. Parliament claimed that their members had the well being of the colonists in mind. The patriots in the Colonies rejected this premise.
Vice admiralty courts were juryless courts located in British colonies that were granted jurisdiction over local legal matters related to maritime activities, such as disputes between merchants and seamen.
In American history, salutary neglect was the 18th-century policy of the British Crown of avoiding the strict enforcement of parliamentary laws, especially trade laws, as long as British colonies remained loyal to the government and contributed to the economic growth of their parent country, England and then, after the Acts of Union 1707, Great Britain. The term was first used in 1775 by Edmund Burke.
The Molasses Act 1733 was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain that imposed a tax of six pence per gallon on imports of molasses from non-British colonies. Parliament created the act largely at the insistence of large plantation owners in the British West Indies. The Act was passed not to raise revenue but to regulate trade by making British products cheaper than those from the French West Indies. The Act greatly affected the significant colonial molasses trade.
Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania is a series of essays written by the Pennsylvania lawyer and legislator John Dickinson (1732–1808) and published under the pseudonym "A Farmer" from 1767 to 1768. The twelve letters were widely read and reprinted throughout the Thirteen Colonies, and were important in uniting the colonists against the Townshend Acts in the run-up to the American Revolution. According to many historians, the impact of the Letters on the colonies was unmatched until the publication of Thomas Paine's Common Sense in 1776. The success of the letters earned Dickinson considerable fame.
The American Revolutionary War inflicted great financial costs on all of the combatants, including the United States, France, Spain and the Kingdom of Great Britain. France and Great Britain spent 1.3 billion livres and 250 million pounds, respectively. The United States spent $400 million in wages for its troops. Spain increased its military spending from 454 million reales in 1778 to over 700 million reales in 1781.
Considerations on the Propriety of Imposing Taxes in the British Colonies was a pamphlet written by Daniel Dulany the Younger in opposition to the UK Stamp Act of 1765 effectively imposing taxes on the colonies. In the pamphlet, published in Annapolis in 1765, Dulany argued that the colonies could not be taxed by Parliament, as they were not represented in it. The pamphlet sold widely and was influential in the development of colonial opinion in the early stages of the American Revolution.
The colonial molasses trade occurred throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the European colonies in the Americas. Molasses was a major trading product in the Americas, being produced by enslaved Africans on sugar plantations on European colonies. The good was a major import for the British North American colonies, which used molasses to produce rum, especially distilleries in New England. The finished product was then exported to Europe as part of the triangular trade.
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