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Navigation Acts
Navigation Acts, in English history, a series of laws designed to restrict England’s
carrying trade to English ships, effective chiefly in the 17th and 18th centuries. The
measures, originally framed to encourage the development of English shipping so that
adequate auxiliary vessels would be available in wartime, became a form of trade
protectionism during an era of mercantilism.
The first navigation act, passed in 1381, remained virtually a dead letter because of a
shortage of ships. In the 16th century various Tudor measures had to be repealed
because they provoked retaliation from other countries. The system came into its own at
the beginning of the colonial era, in the 17th century. The great Navigation Act passed
by the Commonwealth government in 1651 was aimed at the Dutch, then England’s
greatest commercial rivals. It distinguished between goods imported from European
countries, which could be brought in either English ships or ships of the country of
origin, and goods brought from Asia, Africa, or America, which could travel to England,
Ireland, or any English colony only in ships from England or the particular colony.
Various fish imports and exports were entirely reserved to English shipping, as was the
English coastal trade. The law was reenacted in 1660, and the practice was introduced
of “enumerating” certain colonial products, which could be shipped directly only to
England, Ireland, or another English colony. These included sugar (until 1739), indigo,
and tobacco; rice and molasses were added during the 18th century. Nonenumerated
goods could go in English ships from English colonies directly to foreign ports. From
1664 English colonies could receive European goods only via England. Scotland was
treated as a foreign country until theAct of Union (1707) gave it equal privileges with
England; Ireland was excluded from the benefits of the laws between 1670 and 1779.
Although English tonnage and trade increased steadily from the late 17th century, critics
of the navigation system argue that this would have occurred in any case and that the
policy forced up freight prices, thus ultimately making English manufactured goods less
competitive. Indeed, from the 1720s to the 1760s—under the leadership of Robert
Walpole and then Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st duke of Newcastle—Parliament practiced
an unwritten policy of “salutary neglect,” under which trade regulations for the colonies
were laxly enforced as long as the colonies remained loyal to Britain and contributed to
the profitability of the British economy. The tightening of the laws in 1764 contributed to
the unrest leading to the rebellion of England’s American colonies; their achievement of
independence made the first serious breach in the navigation system, and from then on
exceptions were increasingly made. Enumeration was abandoned in 1822, and the
navigation laws were finally repealed in 1849 and 1854.
Proclamation Line of 1763
In 1763, at ethe end of the French and Indian War, the British issued a
proclamation,mainly intended to conciliate the Indians by checking the encroachment of
settlers on their lands. In the centuries since the proclamation, it has become one of the
cornerstones of Native American law in the United States and Canada.
After the conclusion of the French and Indian War in America, the British Empire began
to tighten control over its rather autonomous colonies. This royal proclamation, which
closed down colonial expansion westward, was the first measure to affect all thirteen
colonies. In response to a revolt of Native Americans led by Pontiac, an Ottawa chief,
King George III declared all lands west of the Appalachian Divide off-limits to colonial
settlers. The edict forbade private citizens and colonial governments alike to buy land
from or make any agreements with natives; the empire would conduct all official
relations. Furthermore, only licensed traders would be allowed to travel west or deal
with Indians. Theoretically protecting colonists from Indian rampages, the measure was
also intended to shield Native Americans from increasingly frequent attacks by white
settlers.
Did You Know?
In the United States, the Proclamation's legality ended with the American
Revolution, but it remains part of aboriginal land claims made by Canada's
First Nation, Metis and Inuit peoples.
Although the proclamation was introduced as a temporary measure, its economic
benefits for Britain prompted ministers to keep it until the eve of the Revolution. A desire
for good farmland caused many colonists to defy the proclamation; others merely
resented the royal restrictions on trade and migration.
1764 – Sugar Act
Definition of Sugar Act
The American Revenue Act of 1764, so called Sugar Act, was a law that
attempted to curb the smuggling of sugar and molasses in the colonies by
reducing the previous tax rate and enforcing the collection of duties. It added
several products such as hides, skins and potash to the list of enumerated
commodities that could be legally exported under the Navigation Acts. It was
introduced by the new British Prime Minister, George Grenville. The 1764 Sugar
Act amended the existing 1733 Sugar and Molasses Act.
Purpose of the Sugar Act
The goal of this law was threefold. First, the British realized that smuggling was
close to endemic and that the rule of law was being undermined by illegal trade.
Second, protecting British trade by introducing new trade restrictions following
the established Navigation Acts. Three, the French Indian War had taken a toll
on British finances and Americans had to pay for their own protection. With these
objectives in mind, the Sugar Act was designed to crack down colonial trade with
countries other than Britain, especially France and Spain with colonies in the
West Indies while increasing revenue to pay British debt.
The older Sugar and Molasses tax charged the customer a duty of 6 pence per
gallon of molasses. The bribe to customs officials per gallon of smuggled
molasses was 1.5p. The new Sugar Act lowered the duty to 3p per gallon. The
British wrongly assumed that Americans would be willing to accept the newly
reduced tax. The smuggling continued until 1766 when the tax was lowered to
one pence, making it cheaper to legally pay the tax than to smuggle. The
revenues collected amounted to an average of £30,000 a year from 1765 to
1774.
Effects of the Sugar Act
In order to enforce the collection of taxes violators were tried in admiralty courts
where a judge decided the outcome rather than in colonial courts in where the
decision was left to a jury. Admiralty courts were located in Halifax, Nova Scotia
while colonial courts were local. Admiralty judges were awarded 5% of the
confiscated cargo as compensation which gave them the financial incentive to
find the violator guilty and thus enforcing the law vigorously. This new system
removed the traditional British protection to a fair trial.
In addition to lowering the tax on sugar and enforcing collection of taxes, the new
law also affected the trade of certain commodities. Lumber and iron were added
to the list of products that could be traded only with England. Duties were
introduced to the importation of coffee, pimiento, wine from Madeira and the
Azores and French and West Indian goods. With few exceptions vessels going to
the colonies had to pass through Britain, unload its cargo, pay duty on it, reload it
and sail to the colonies. These measures increased the cost of doing business
and undermined local industry.
The Sugar Act and the American Revolution
Because of the strict enforcement the act did accomplish its goal of reducing
smuggling which affected colonial economy, especially in Massachusetts, New
York and Pennsylvania. The protests against the act were heavier in affected
colonies and almost non-existent in unaffected ones. The law
nevertheless promoted boycott of British luxury goods in some colonies and gave
some boost to local manufacturing.
For the first time the Sugar Act raised different constitutional issues. While many
perceived the Sugar Act as an infringement of their constitutional rights because
they were, for the first time, taxed to raise revenue for the benefit of the crown,
others viewed it as a tax to regulate the flow of trade and as a continuation of the
existing and long accepted 1733 Molasses Act. Those who perceived the law as
unconstitutional thought that the law transformed a trade regulation into a
revenue measure. Colonial residents had a fragmented view and it was not
perceived in a uniformed way. The following year most colonial residents would
agree that the proposed Stamp Act of 1765 violated their colonial rights of “No
taxation without representation”.
Stamp Act, (1765)
in U.S. colonial history, first British parliamentary attempt to raise revenue through
direct taxation of all colonial commercial and legal papers, newspapers, pamphlets,
cards, almanacs, and dice. The devastating effect of Pontiac’s War (1763–64) on
colonial frontier settlements added to the enormous new defense burdens resulting from
Great Britain’s victory (1763) in the French and Indian War. The British chancellor of the
Exchequer, Sir George Grenville, hoped to meet at least half of these costs by the
combined revenues of the Sugar Act (1764) and the Stamp Act, a common revenue
device in England. Completely unexpected was the avalanche of protest from the
colonists, who effectively nullified the Stamp Act by outright refusal to use the stamps as
well as by riots, stamp burning, and intimidation of colonial stamp distributors. Colonists
passionately upheld their rights as Englishmen to be taxed only by their own consent
through their own representative assemblies, as had been the practice for a century and
a half. In addition to nonimportation agreements among colonial merchants, the Stamp
Act Congress was convened in New York (October 1765) by moderate representatives
of nine colonies to frame resolutions of “rights and grievances” and to petition the king
and Parliament for repeal of the objectionable measures. Bowing chiefly to pressure (in
the form of a flood of petitions to repeal) from British merchants and manufacturers
whose colonial exports had been curtailed, Parliament, largely against the wishes of the
House of Lords, repealed the act in early 1766. Simultaneously, however, Parliament
issued the Declaratory Act, which reasserted its right of direct taxation anywhere within
the empire, “in all cases whatsoever.” The protest throughout the colonies against the
Stamp Act contributed much to the spirit and organization of unity that was a necessary
prelude to the struggle for independence a decade later
Quartering Act
On March 24 1765, Parliament passes the Quartering Act, outlining the locations
and conditions in which British soldiers are to find room and board in the
American colonies.
The Quartering Act of 1765 required the colonies to house British soldiers in
barracks provided by the colonies. If the barracks were too small to house all the
soldiers, then localities were to accommodate the soldiers in local inns, livery
stables, ale houses, victualling houses, and the houses of sellers of wine. Should
there still be soldiers without accommodation after all such publick houses were
filled, the colonies were then required to take, hire and make fit for the reception
of his Majesty’s forces, such and so many uninhabited houses, outhouses, barns,
or other buildings as shall be necessary.
As the language of the act makes clear, the popular image of Redcoats tossing
colonists from their bedchambers in order to move in themselves was not the
intent of the law; neither was it the practice. However, the New York colonial
assembly disliked being commanded to provide quarter for British troops–they
preferred to be asked and then to give their consent, if they were going to have
soldiers in their midst at all. Thus, they refused to comply with the law, and in
1767, Parliament passed the New York Restraining Act. The Restraining Act
prohibited the royal governor of New York from signing any further legislation
until the assembly complied with the Quartering Act.
In New York, the governor managed to convince Parliament that the assembly
had complied. In Massachusetts, where barracks already existed on an island
from which soldiers had no hope of keeping the peace in a city riled by the
Townshend Revenue Acts, British officers followed the Quartering Act’s
injunction to quarter their soldiers in public places, not in private homes. Within
these constraints, their only option was to pitch tents on Boston Common. The
soldiers, living cheek by jowl with riled Patriots, were soon involved in street
brawls and then the Boston Massacre of 1770, during which not only five rockthrowing colonial rioters were killed but any residual trust between Bostonians
and the resident Redcoats. That breach would never be healed in the New
England port city, and the British soldiers stayed in Boston until George
Washington drove them out with the Continental Army in 1776.
THE DECLARATORY ACT
There was nothing drastic or immediately threatening about the Declaratory
Act, passed by the British parliament immediately after the Stamp Act was
repealed in 1766. It raised no new tax, placed no restriction or requisition
on the colonial assemblies, in fact it did not require anything from the
colonists at all – except an understanding of their subordinate role to the
British crown and parliament. The Declaratory Act was simply a
proclamation that reinforced parliament’s law-making power over the
American colonies. It was designed to clarify the relationship between
Britain and America, passed really for the benefit of the Americans
themselves, who seemed to have forgotten their place. According to
historian John E. Findling, the Declaratory Act “reaffirmed the Parliament’s
commitment to govern and to tax for the entire empire” and “satisfied the
members of Parliament about the legitimacy and reach of their power”. The
act read in part:
“Several houses of representatives in his Majesty’s colonies and
plantations in America , have against law, claimed to themselves the sole
and exclusive right of imposing duties and taxes upon his majesty’s
subjects in those colonies and plantations; they have passed certain votes,
resolutions, and orders derogatory to the legislative authority of parliament.
The said colonies and plantations in America have been and are
subordinate unto, and dependent upon the imperial crown and parliament
of Great Britain; the King and parliament [has] full power and authority to
make laws and statutes to bind the colonies and people of America,
subjects of the crown of Great Britain, in all cases whatsoever.”
The Declaratory Act was viewed by some in the colonies, quite justifiably,
as a face-saving measure. Many considered it a statement of political
sovereignty, issued to ease the embarrassment of the Stamp Act repeal.
Others thought the Declaratory Act a more sinister development. They saw
it not just as a declaration of principle but also a statement of intent; some
took it as evidence that parliament intended more legislation to tax the
colonies and subordinate the colonial assemblies. To the radicals, the
Declaratory Act was inherently more worrying than the earlier attempts to
implement petty taxation. Whatever the case the Declaratory Act did not
have an immediate impact on the colonies; it would take another raft of
taxation legislation the following year to stir the Americans once more.
Townshend Acts
Townshend Acts, (June 15–July 2, 1767), in U.S. colonial history, series
of four acts passed by the British Parliament in an attempt to assert what it
considered to be its historic right to exert authority over the colonies
through suspension of a recalcitrant representative assembly and through
strict provisions for the collection of revenue duties. The British American
colonists named the acts after Charles Townshend, who sponsored them
The Suspending Act prohibited the New York Assembly from conducting
any further business until it complied with the financial requirements of the
Quartering Act (1765) for the expenses of British troops stationed there.
The second act, often called the Townshend duties, imposed direct
revenue duties—that is, duties aimed not merely at regulating trade but at
putting money into the British treasury. These were payable at colonial
ports and fell on lead, glass, paper, paint, and tea. It was the second time
in the history of the colonies that a tax had been levied solely for the
purpose of raising revenue. The third act established strict and often
arbitrary machinery of customs collection in the American colonies,
including additional officers, searchers, spies, coast guard vessels, search
warrants, writs of assistance, and a Board of Customs Commissioners
at Boston, all to be financed out of customs revenues. The fourth
Townshend Act lifted commercial duties on tea, allowing it to be exported to
the colonies free of all British taxes.
The acts posed an immediate threat to established traditions of colonial
self-government, especially the practice of taxation through representative
provincial assemblies. They were resisted everywhere with verbal agitation
and physical violence, deliberate evasion of duties, renewed
nonimportation agreements among merchants, and overt acts of hostility
toward British enforcement agents, especially in Boston. Such colonial
tumult, coupled with the instability of frequently changing British ministries,
resulted in repeal—on March 5, 1770, the same day as the Boston
Massacre—of all revenue duties except that on tea, lifting of the Quartering
Act requirements, and removal of troops from Boston, which thus
temporarily averted hostilities.
The Coercive Acts
Upset by the Boston Tea Party and other blatant acts of destruction of British property by
American colonists, the British Parliament enacts the Coercive Acts (otherwise known as
the Intolerable Acts), to the outrage of American Patriots, on March 28, 1774.
The Coercive Acts were a series of four acts established by the British government. The
aim of the legislation was to restore order in Massachusetts and punish Bostonians for
their Tea Party, in which members of the revolutionary-minded Sons of Liberty boarded
three British tea ships in Boston Harbor and dumped 342 crates of tea—nearly $1 million
worth in today’s money—into the water to protest the Tea Act.
Passed in response to the Americans’ disobedience, the Coercive Acts included:
• The Boston Port Act, which closed the port of Boston until damages from the
Boston Tea Party were paid.
• The Massachusetts Government Act, which restricted Massachusetts; democratic
town meetings and turned the governor’s council into an appointed body.
• The Administration of Justice Act, which made British officials immune to
criminal prosecution in Massachusetts.
• The Quartering Act, which required colonists to house and quarter British troops
on demand, including in their private homes as a last resort.
• A fifth act, the Quebec Act, which extended freedom of worship to Catholics in
Canada, as well as granting Canadians the continuation of their judicial system,
was joined with the Coercive Acts in colonial parlance as one of the Intolerable
Acts, as the mainly Protestant colonists did not look kindly on the ability of
Catholics to worship freely on their borders.
More important than the acts themselves was the colonists’ response to the legislation.
Parliament hoped that the acts would cut Boston and New England off from the rest of
the colonies and prevent unified resistance to British rule. They expected the rest of the
colonies to abandon Bostonians to British martial law. Instead, other colonies rushed to
the city’s defense, sending supplies and forming their own Provincial Congresses to
discuss British misrule and mobilize resistance to the crown. In September 1774, the First
Continental Congress met in Philadelphia and began orchestrating a united resistance to
British rule in America.
The Quebec Act
The Quebec Act of 1774 was meant to improve Britain's governance of
Quebec, Canada. The act was meant to be an act of good faith towards the
Canadians, but it had limited success and ultimately hastened the
American Revolution.
Introduction to the Quebec Act
After Britain's victory over the French in the French and Indian War in 1763,
France's colonies in what is now Quebec, Canada, were ceded to the
British. As part of the peace treaty of 1763, the existing French Canadians
became British subjects. But incorporating Quebec into the British North
American empire proved more difficult than expected. Thus, the Quebec
Act of 1774 was born. The Quebec Act was designed to improve the British
governance over their new territory in Quebec as well as to grant greater
religious freedom to the French Canadians living there. Though the act
seemed well-intentioned, it was ultimately less than successful.
Background to the Quebec Act
After the French and Indian War, the British struggled to fully incorporate
Quebec into the rest of the North American empire. They established a
temporary government in Quebec but knew they needed to improve the
governance of the region eventually. At first, the British also tried to enforce
the Test Act in Quebec as a way to make Quebec more like its other North
American colonies. The Test Act required British subjects to swear
allegiance to the British Crown and to be members of the Church of
England in order to participate in public affairs. Well, most French
Canadians living in Quebec were Catholic, not Anglican, so they were
barred from participating in public and governmental affairs. The Quebec
Act was meant to be a solution to some of these political and cultural
tensions.
Summary of the Quebec Act
Thus, in 1774, the British passed the Quebec Act as a way to improve
British control over the region. The Quebec Act performed several
functions. First, the Act expanded the boundaries of Quebec into land that
some of the existing American colonies had already claimed. Secondly, the
Act replaced the temporary government of Quebec with a more permanent
(and supposedly better) government; a governor and his council would now
rule the region. Next, the Act allowed those in Quebec to use French civil
law in private matters as long as they used English law in public matters.
Finally, the Act was designed to give the Catholics in Quebec more
religious freedom. The Catholic Church could now collect tithes in the area.
In addition, the Act also revoked the part of the Test Act that required
British subjects to be a part of the Church of England in order to participate
in government. Though British subjects in Quebec still had to swear
allegiance to the British Crown, they no longer had to take an oath to the
Church of England. That meant that Catholics in Quebec could participate
in public affairs thanks to the Quebec Act.
Effects of the Quebec Act
The Quebec Act had mixed results. In 1774 when the act was passed, the
British Crown knew that tensions with the American colonies would soon
boil over to revolution (which broke out the following year). So, the British
Crown hoped that the Quebec Act especially with its extension of religious
freedom to Catholics, would solidify Quebec’s loyalty to the British Crown.
Quebec did not in fact rebel along with the American colonies, so in that
sense, the Act was successful.
However, the American colonists saw this as a limitation of their rights to
move westward. Although this act was not meant to be a punishment to
Massachusetts and the other colonies, radicals lumped this act with the
rest of the Intolerable Acts and declared that the act was further evidence
of the British Crown’s attempt to control the everyday life of the colonists.