[Footnote 1:  This is one of the things complained of in the Declaration of Independence.]

%109.  The Sugar Act and Stamp Tax.%—­The Sugar Act was not a new grievance.  In 1733 Parliament laid a tax of 6_d_. a gallon on molasses and 5_s_. per hundredweight on sugar brought into this country from any other place than the British West Indies.  This was to force the colonists to buy their sugar and molasses from nobody but British sugar planters.  After having expired five times and been five times reenacted, the Sugar Act expired for the sixth time in 1763, and the colonies begged that it might not be renewed.  But Parliament merely reduced the molasses duty to 3_d_. and laid new duties on coffee, French and East Indian goods, indigo, white sugar, and Spanish and Portuguese wines.  It then resolved that “for further defraying the expense of protecting the colonists it would be necessary to charge certain stamp duties in the colonies.”

At that time, 1764, no such thing as an internal tax laid by Parliament for the purpose of raising revenue existed, or ever had existed, in America.  Money for the use of the King had always been raised by taxes imposed by the legislatures of the colonies.  The moment, therefore, the people heard that this money was to be raised in future by parliamentary taxation, they became much alarmed, and the legislatures instructed their business agents in London to protest.

This the agents did in February, 1765.  But Grenville, the Prime Minister, was not to be persuaded, and on March 22, 1765, Parliament passed the Stamp Act[1].

[Footnote 1:  The exact text of the Stamp Act has been reprinted in American History Leaflets, No. 21.  For an excellent account of the causes and consequences of the Stamp Act, read Lecky’s England in the Eighteenth Century, Vol.  III., Chap. 12; Frothingham’s Rise of the Republic of the United States, Chap. 5; Channing’s The United States of America, 1765-1865, pp. 41-50.]

%110.  The Stamp Distributors.%—­That the collection of the new duty might give as little offense to the colonists as possible, Grenville desired that the stamps and the stamped paper should be sold by Americans, and invited the agents of the colonies to name men to be “stamp distributors” in their colonies.  The law was to go into effect on the 1st of November, 1765.  After that day every piece of vellum, every piece of paper, on which was written any legal document for use in any court, was to be charged with a stamp duty of from three pence to ten pounds sterling.  After that day, every license, bond, deed, warrant, bill of lading, indenture, every pamphlet, almanac, newspaper, pack of cards, must be written or printed on stamped paper to be made in England and sold at prices fixed by law.  If any dispute arose under the law, the case might be tried in the vice-admiralty courts without a jury.[2]