Americans disliked the new western policy but realized that the problems were knotty and that no simple solution existed. Their protests were muted. Great Britain’s effort to raise money in America to help support the increased cost of colonial administration caused far more vehement complaints. George Grenville, who became prime minister in 1763, was a fairly able man, although long-winded and narrow in outlook. His reputation as a financial expert was based chiefly on his eagerness to reduce government spending. Under his leadership Parliament passed, in April 1764, the so-called Sugar Act. This law placed tariffs on sugar, coffee, wines, and other things imported into America in substantial amounts. At the same time, measures aimed at enforcing all the trade laws were put into effect. Those accused of violating the Sugar Act were to be tried before British naval officers in vice admiralty courts. Grenville was determined to end smuggling, corruption, and inefficiency. Soon the customs service was collecting each year 15 times as much in duties as it had before the war.
More alarming was the nature of the Sugar Act and the manner of its passage. The Navigation Act duties had been intended to regulate commerce, and the sums collected had not cut deeply into profits. Yet few Americans were willing to concede that Parliament had the right to tax them. As Englishmen they believed that no one should be deprived arbitrarily of property and that, as James Otis put it in his stirring pamphlet The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved (1764), everyone should be “free from all taxes but what he consents to in person, or by his representative.” John Locke had made clear in his Second Treatise on Government (1690) that property ought never be taken from people without their consent, not because material values transcend all others, but because human liberty can never be secure when arbitrary power of any kind exists. “If our Trade may be taxed why not our Lands?” the Boston town meeting asked when news of the Sugar Act reached America. “Why not the produce of our Lands and every Thing we possess or make use of?”
•••-[Read the Document Otis, The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved at myhistorylab. com
World History
