Position:Home>History> What was the outcome of the sugar act of 1764?

The Sugar Act reduced the rate of tax on molasses from six pence to three pence per gallon, while Grenville took measures that the duty be strictly enforced!. The act also listed more foreign goods to be taxed including sugar, certain wines, coffee, pimiento, cambric and printed calico, and further, regulated the export of lumber and iron!. The enforced tax on molasses caused the almost immediate decline in the rum industry in the colonies!. The combined effect of the new duties was to sharply reduce the trade with Madeira, the Azores, the Canary Islands, and the French West Indies (Guadalupe, Martinique and Santo Domingo (now Haiti)), all important destination ports for lumber, flour, cheese, and assorted farm products!. The situation disrupted the colonial economy by reducing the markets to which the colonies could sell, and the amount of currency available to them for the purchase of British manufactured goods!.

This act, and the Currency Act, set the stage for the revolt at the imposition of the Stamp Act!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

---

---

The Sugar Act (citation 4 Geo!. III c!. 15), officially called the American Duties Act, passed on April 5, 1764, was a revenue-raising Act passed by the Parliament of Great Britain!. The preamble to the act stated that, "it is expedient that new provisions and regulations should be established for improving the revenue of this Kingdom !.!.!. and !.!.!. it is just and necessary that a revenue should be raised !.!.!. for defraying the expenses of defending, protecting, and securing the same!."[1] The earlier Sugar and Molasses Act, which had imposed a tax of six pence per gallon on molasses, been had never been effectively collected due to colonial evasion!. By reducing the rate in half and increasing measures to enforce the tax, the British hoped that the tax would actually be collected!.[2]

The Sugar Act was passed by Parliament on April 5, 1764, 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 impacted 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 Americans!.[9]

New England especially suffered economic losses from the Sugar Act!. The stricter enforcement made smuggling more dangerous and risky, and the profit margin on rum, so the colonists argued, was too small to support any tax!. Forced to increase their prices, many Americans, it was feared, would be priced out of the market!. The British West Indies, on the other hand, now had undivided access to colonial exports and with supply well exceeding demand the islands prospered with their reduced expenses while all New Englanders saw the revenue from their exports decrease!. The foreign West Indies had also been the primary colonial source for specie, and as the reserves of specie were depleted the soundness of colonial currency was threatened!.[10]

Two prime movers behind the protests to the act were Samuel Adams and James Otis, both of Massachusetts!. In August 1764, fifty Boston merchants agreed to stop purchasing British luxury items, and in both Boston and New York there were movements to increase colonial manufacturing!. There were sporadic outbreaks of violence, most notably in Rhode Island!.[11] Overall, however, there was not an immediate high level of protest over the Sugar Act either in New England or the rest of the colonies!. That would begin in the later part of the next year when the Stamp Act was passed!.[12] The Sugar Act was repealed in 1766 and replaced with a further reduced tax of one pence per gallon on all molasses imports, British or foreign!. This occurred around the same time that the Stamp Act of 1765 was repealed (cancel an act or law)!.

http://en!.wikipedia!.org/wiki/Sugar_ActWww@QuestionHome@Com

---

---