Sugar Act

American Eras

Sugar Act

Sources

War and Debt. The British Empire triumphed in the Seven Years’ War, winning undisputed control of North America and control of the world’s oceans. However, the war was extremely expensive, and maintaining the empire and the seas required a military force in North America and a navy. The war itself left England with a debt of £122,603,336, requiring an annual interest payment £4,409,797, or about half of the nation’s annual budget. With the British people already heavily taxed, Parliament sought other sources of revenue.

Colonial Trade. One lucrative source of revenue, Parliament realized, would be the trade of the American colonies. Because the colonies benefited from British military power, and in fact the war had been fought to protect the colonists, it seemed only fair that the colonists share the burden of debt. Britain had never enforced regulations on colonial trade, and though the American colonists had a thriving commercial economy, their trade only contributed about £2,000 each year to the British treasury. In 1764 Parliament passed the Sugar Act, which actually reduced the tariff colonists would have to pay on sugar, but it increased enforcement. By having customs collectors in the colonies inspect ships and cargoes, Parliament could raise £78,000 each year from the intercolonial sugar trade.

Molasses and Rum. Britain’s most lucrative colonies were in the West Indies. Barbados and Jamaica produced sugar, which would be shipped in the form of molasses to the North American mainland colonies, particularly Rhode Island and Massachusetts, where it would be refined into either sugar or rum. In return these colonies shipped food supplies to feed the slave laborers in the West Indies so that the sugar planters would not have to grow food for the labor force but could use every available bit of land to grow sugar. North American traders would also go to Africa to buy more slaves for the West Indian plantations, which absorbed about 40 percent of all Africans brought to the New World. Molasses and rum and slaves were making some of the American colonists wealthy, and it seemed only fair that they pay their share to the British treasury.

Enforcement. Parliament reduced the tariff on molasses from six pence per gallon to three pence; however, Parliament also sent customs collectors to the colonies to make sure this tax was collected. Parliament also gave the vice-admiralty courts more power to hear cases involving the trade laws and limited the power of other courts to hear related cases. Vice-admiralty courts, which did not have juries, had originally been established to hear cases involving sailors’ wage disputes as well as cases involving trade laws. With one judge, who was often also the colony’s chief justice, and no jury these courts could resolve disputes quickly. They were not, however, courts of record—their decisions were not binding on other courts. There were twelve vice-admiralty courts in British America (Quebec; Nova Scotia; Newfoundland; Massachusetts and New Hampshire; Rhode Island; Connecticut, New York and New Jersey; Pennsylvania and Delaware; Maryland; Virginia; North Carolina; and Georgia). The sugar act established a new vice-admiralty court in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and gave this court jurisdiction over all the local admiralty courts.

Newport. John Robinson arrived as customs collector in Newport, Rhode Island, determined to enforce the

law. On his arrival the merchants of Newport greeted him with an offer of a £70,000 bribe if he would look the other way when their ships reached port. Robinson was outraged, but he discovered that his own rectitude was not enough. The local merchants already had allies in the vice-admiralty judge and advocate, both consisting of local men. The judge would wait until Robinson was out of town to call his cases, so no evidence could be presented. Sometimes the case would be dismissed when the advocate, who was supposed to prosecute cases, would not show up in court. In the rare cases when the judge felt compelled to condemn a ship for violating the sugar act, Robinson would see the full extent of the community’s support for its own merchants. The judge would order the condemned ship auctioned off, and no one would bid. The judge then, for a nominal sum, would sell the ship back to its original owner.

John Robinson and the Polly. In April 1765 John Robinson followed the ship Polly up the Taunton River from Newport, suspecting it had sailed past his customs office without reporting the molasses on board. When the ship docked at Dighton, Massachusetts, twenty miles from Newport, Robinson boarded it, discovered the molasses, and ordered the Polly seized; but no Dighton men were willing to execute his orders. He had to walk twenty miles back to Newport, where he hoped to find men willing to enforce His Majesty’s customs laws. While Robinson was walking back to Newport, men from Dighton boarded the ship and removed all its cargo and equipment, stripped it to its frame, then drilled holes into its hull. When Robinson returned to Dighton, the Polly sat on the bottom of the Taunton river, and its owner charged Robinson with destroying his ship. The local sheriff arrested Robinson and marched him eight miles up river to Taunton. Though Robinson was ultimately released, his arrest showed the difficulty a customs official would have in enforcing this unpopular law.

Unlikely Allies. The Sugar Act brought together unlikely allies: wealthy colonial merchants and the lawless lower orders of society. By convincing both that they had a common interest, and that this interest differed from the interests of Britain, Parliament had begun a process which would end in independence. Colonists also began to distinguish between acts passed to regulate trade, such as the 1690 Navigation Acts, and taxes passed to raise revenue. Parliament, they said, could regulate colonial trade, but only the colonial assemblies could tax the colonists. Eight colonial assemblies adopted protests against the Sugar Act, but because the Sugar Act mainly hurt New England merchants, and as it could be considered an act to regulate trade more than a revenue act, the protest was muted. But just as the colonial assemblies were drafting their protests, Parliament passed the Stamp Act, designed to raise revenues from all the colonists. Opposition to the Sugar Act was drowned out by the fierce opposition to the Stamp Act.

Sources

Edmund S. Morgan and Helen M. Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution (Chapel Hill: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture by the University of North Carolina Press, 1953);

Lawrence Henry Gipson, The British Empire before the American Revolution, volume 11, The Triumphant Empire: The Rumbling of the Coming Storm, 1766–1770 (New York: Knopf, 1965).

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