Sugar Act

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sugar Act ( German  " Sugar Act " ) is the most common name for a in April 1764 of the British Parliament decreed Customs Act (c 4 Geo. III. 15 according to the count at Large Statutes ), which the British colonies in North America was concerned. The law is also called the American Revenue Act, or simply the Revenue Act .

It was formally an extension and amendment of the Molasses Act , with which an import tariff on molasses was set in 1733 , but which was systematically evaded by smuggling and remained ineffective. The aim of the Sugar Act was not only to put a stop to molasses smuggling, but also to use the customs revenue to relieve the strained British public finances due to the Seven Years' War (1756–1763). Since the Sugar Act, unlike previous customs regulations, was not declared as a trade regulation, but was expressly enacted with the intention of increasing tax revenue , it represented a significant break with the previous policy of the British government towards its colonies. Especially in the New England colonies called it aroused fierce resistance and led to numerous acts of sabotage against the customs authorities and the Royal Navy as well as formal protests by the political bodies of the colonial self-government. These disputes intensified with the adoption of the Stamp Act in 1765 and marked the beginning of the American Revolution .

background

Great Britain after the Seven Years War

George Grenville, British Prime Minister from 1763 to 1765.

The law was one of the measures with which George Grenville , who had been Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer since April 1763 , tried to relieve the state finances and at the same time to make the administration of the growing empire more effective. This increased government intervention in the interests of the colonies ended the era of the salutary neglect , the policy of "beneficial neglect" with which London had promoted the far-reaching self-government and self-taxation of the colonists in the decades before. Great Britain had emerged victorious from the Seven Years' War and gained roughly the greater part of the French colonial empire in North America, but the war put a strain on state finances to an unprecedented extent. On January 31, 1763, the UK's national debt was £ 122,606,336 , with more than £ 4 million a year to pay interest alone . In the war years, numerous domestic taxes had already been increased and new ones introduced, and the British population suffered from an enormous tax burden, which increasingly led to resentment. Nevertheless, Grenville brought a number of new tax laws through parliament, some of which led to violent protests in England, such as the increase in the tax on cider in the apple-growing areas in the south-west of the country.

In contrast, the budgets of the British colonies in North America recovered quickly in the post-war years, especially since they had been compensated for their contribution to the war (i.e. for requisitions and contributions ) with millions from the British treasury. The colonists were exempt from direct taxation, so they paid taxes exclusively to the governments of the various colonies. The customs revenue from foreign trade was the only tax that flowed into the British treasury. Grenville's predecessor, John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute , therefore made efforts to increase customs revenue in the colonies and to put a stop to the flourishing smuggling. Although money from the budgets of the colonies had flowed into the British state budget, especially during times of war, the British Treasury had to formally request the governors of the individual colonies for all contributions . The inadequacy of this approach had shown itself in the last French and Indian War, in which the colonies reacted slowly and reluctantly to demands for contributions, even though they themselves had become a theater of war. In 1762, Bute passed a law that increased the commission for customs officers to half of the confiscated contraband; he also authorized the Royal Navy to search suspicious ships; in the event of a successful conviction, the officers of the ships involved should receive half the commission of the customs officers on land. A circular to the governors of all colonies swore to ensure compliance with the old and new customs regulations.

Last but not least, the idea behind the goal of higher taxation of the American colonies was the conviction that the war, if not primarily for the good of the American colonists, should also share in its costs and follow-up costs . According to Grenville's will, the additional income from the American tariffs should primarily finance the maintenance of the military stationed in the colonies. After the Peace of Paris , a 10,000-strong standing army was stationed in America, a large part of it in the new colonies of Canada as well as East and West Florida , ceded by France and Spain respectively , as the new subjects apparently did not seem too sure of their loyalty: The troops were supposed to protect the western frontier of the "old" colonies against feared Indian attacks, and after the Royal Proclamation of October 1763 , the Indian territories were also to protect against illegal intrusion by British settlers. Grenville estimated the cost of maintaining the army in North America at around £ 220,000 a year. It seemed to him appropriate that the colonies should contribute to the financing of the army, especially since it was doing its service locally in their own interest. Overall, according to calculations by Grenville's Treasury Department, the new customs regulations should generate revenues of around 78,000 pounds per year, i.e. hardly more than a third of the estimated costs for the army, Westminster would pay the rest itself.

The Molasses Act of 1733

The basis for the provisions of the Sugar Act was a report that the Supreme Customs Commission (the Commissioners of the Customs ) presented to the royal treasurers (the Lords of the Treasury ) in September 1763 . It drew particular attention to the failure of the Molasses Act of 1733, which regulated the trade in various commodities, particularly molasses , in the colonies. Accordingly, the producers in the British West Indies had an export duty of 4½d . Paying importers in the North American colonies an import duty of 6d per gallon. per gallon (which was a good 100% of the usual purchase price). The report calculated the total tariff revenue from the Molasses Act and thus showed a noticeable discrepancy between the revenue from the West Indian and North American customs authorities:

Period Customs traffic of the West Indies North American Colonies
1733-1742 £ 97,938.10.4 £ 183.19.5
1742-1752 £ 159,887.18 £ 10,814.18
1752-1762 £ 262,827.10 £ 10,653.13
total £ 520,653.19.4 £ 21,652.10

So the report noted the obvious and well-known fact that the Molasses Act was being systematically circumvented. Molasses smuggling was particularly unabashed in Rhode Island , the colony whose economy was most dependent on the rum distillery; the report noted that no Molasses Act revenue at all had been remitted from this colony since 1744 . The report also pointed to the fact that customs revenues from the North American colonies last amounted to around 1,800 pounds per year, while the maintenance of the customs administration alone cost 7,600 pounds in 1763. The report concluded with an extensive catalog of recommended corrective actions that were soon reflected in the text of the Sugar Act.

Grenville's draft was approved during the spring 1764 budget meetings. On March 22nd, the House of Commons voted for the law by almost a three-quarters majority, while the House of Lords nodded it with almost no debate. On April 5, the law was signed by the king and came into force on September 29, 1764. Grenville's proposals hardly met with any resistance worth mentioning. The opposition around William Pitt had spent in February of that year in the debate over the indictment of John Wilkes and lost this trial of strength with Grenville. In contrast to this political precedent, Grenville's budgetary policy barely stirred the moods of parliamentarians; his speech on the budget, which was at least lengthy according to Horace Walpole's testimony, was greeted with a mixture of yawns and applause. The idea that the colonies would have to bear at least part of the costs for the army stationed in them apparently met with unanimous approval.

The colonies were not represented in parliament. They tried to convey their interests in London through agents who informed the governments of their colonies about the political situation and conveyed the colonial positions to the British Cabinet, for example by means of memoranda and protest notes. In the case of the Sugar Act, however, the ability of these intermediaries to act was restricted because the winter storms over the North Atlantic prevented rapid communication, so that the objections prepared by the governments of Massachusetts and Rhode Island did not reach London until the law had already been passed was.

Provisions

Changes in import and export duties

The Sugar Act introduced numerous new import duties on selected commercial goods such as coffee , indigo , allspice and sugar . On Madeira wine , which enjoyed great popularity in the colonies, particularly high duty at 7 pounds per ton was charged. In this way the Americans should be encouraged to buy their (duty-free) wine from English traders . In addition to the introduction of new tariffs, the Sugar Act also provided for the abolition of back tariffs on various commodities re-exported to the colonies, such as French lace or Chinese silk , which in turn was supposed to boost sales of British textiles, which were all the cheaper as a result. Rigid export restrictions were introduced for other commodities. Since the Navigation Act of 1660, certain commercial goods were only allowed to be exported to Great Britain and British colonies, such as sugar, cotton , tobacco , colored woods , and later also rice . With the Sugar Act, the list of these so-called enumerated goods was expanded to include hides and furs , potash and wood .

Among all the various measures, the newly determined import tariff on molasses was particularly drastic. The numerous distilleries in the colonies produced around 80% of their rum from French molasses. In New England in particular, rum distilling was an important branch of the economy, and in Rhode Island it was the largest industry at all. Conversely, the French Antilles, with their huge sugar cane plantations managed by hundreds of thousands of slaves, represented an important export market for American wood, grain and meat . The import duty of 6d, which has been levied on paper at least since the Molasses Act was passed . per gallon on imported molasses has been systematically evaded through corruption and smuggling; Customs officials accepted a bribe of ½ to 1½d. per gallon "appease". Since it was evident that the tariff was too high to be worth avoiding, the Sugar Act lowered the tariff on French molasses to 3d. per gallon, albeit with the declared intention of actually collecting this duty. The decision on 3d was preceded by a tug-of-war between the stakeholders involved. The sugar cane growers of the British Caribbean islands had to accept that the French "sugar islands" Guadeloupe and Martinique , which Great Britain had conquered during the war, were returned to France in the Peace of Paris and were all the more afraid of their competition on the New England market. They therefore advocated a particularly high protective tariff of 4d per gallon. The agents of the New England colonies, on the other hand, pushed for the lowest possible tariff. Jasper Mauduit, for example, who represented Massachusetts in London, initially worked towards an inch of 1d, when this proved too unlikely, he and the agents of the colonies of Rhode Island, New Hampshire and New York sent a memorandum to Grenville in which they advertised an inch of 2d, but Grenville refused to let go.

Reform of customs administration and jurisdiction

The implementation of the new tax policy also required a fundamental reform of the customs administration. Before the Sugar Act, duty collection was the job of port officers appointed by the London government. Many of them, however, hardly ever set foot on American soil, but delegated their duties to subordinates while they were enjoying their government salaries in England. The port supervisors in the colonies were mostly composed of poorly paid henchmen who were particularly susceptible to corruption. Even before the Sugar Act was passed in 1762, all tax collectors were urged to go to their posts or to vacate their posts immediately (which, as it turned out, many actually preferred to move to America). The penalties for customs officers convicted of corruption have been tightened dramatically; Even the governors of the colonies were sworn to see to it that the law was enforced and to send regular reports on the customs revenue to London.

With the Sugar Act, customs officers have now been given extensive immunity . The claims for damages of shipowners and traders whose ships and goods were wrongly confiscated for smuggling were limited; In such cases, the process costs should no longer be passed on to the customs officers. Previously, mostly local juries had decided such cases, which all too often decided in the interests of the traders in their respective cities; Also, local judges who ruled against the interests of the local merchant class were often exposed to the hostility of their neighbors or even to the violence of hired mobs . Although the prosecutors were negotiating and admiralty courts can antragen, but sentences were these independent courts not only too often again by the local ordinary courts conceded , and the Admiralty judges themselves were in danger in the event of such a revision of being sued for damages. To prevent such influence from local interest groups, the Sugar Act announced the establishment of a new Admiralty Court with jurisdiction over the whole of America. This new court, the Vice-Admiralty Court for All America , was set up in May of that year - noticeably not by a parliamentary decision, but by a royal decree . Halifax in the colony of Nova Scotia was designated as the seat of the new court , which on the one hand was too far away from the major port cities of New England to be worth the trial for many plaintiffs, on the other hand it was protected as a garrison town by thousands of British soldiers has been.

In order to crush the flourishing smuggling, all merchant ships were subjected to a sophisticated control system, as it had been in use in the ports of Great Britain for a long time: From now on, shipowners had to deposit a high deposit with the customs authorities for each of their ships before leaving the port . Captains were obliged to leave their entire cargo inspect the port customs and sealed by customs transport document ( cocket lead) with him; In the port of destination, the cargo had to be compared with this document by customs officers before it could be unloaded. Any deviation from the cargo listed on the shipping document could result in the loss of the deposit and a smuggling charge.

Formal protests of the colonies

Massachusetts

When the news of Grenville's intentions reached the colonies in the fall of 1763, it sparked brisk journalistic and later increasingly political activity among the sea-trade-dependent merchant elites of the New England coastal cities, especially in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Since this class dominated the parliaments and offices of the colonies, it was able to get the governments of the colonies to draw up official petitions , remonstrances and memoranda to the address of the British parliament or the king. They tried to influence public opinion in the colonies with a flood of mostly anonymous newspaper articles and pamphlets.

In Massachusetts , the traders in the capital, Boston, were instrumental in opposing the Sugar Act. If they were already loosely organized, the threatening law caused them to formally join forces in a Society for Encouraging Trade and Commerce . In December 1763 this set up a memorandum addressed to the council of the colony on the state of trade ( State of Trade ), of which they sent copies to friendly traders in other cities. Soon after the Boston model, similar associations were formed, for example in Plymouth , Marblehead , Salem , then in February in New York City , and later in other colonies. In the next months and years these dealer clubs were in increasingly intensive correspondence; they are such a direct forerunner of the Committees of Correspondence , which played a key role in coordinating the action of the various insurgent colonies in the later course of the American Revolution. In the case of the Sugar Act, the Society's intervention has not yet resulted in an official statement. A copy of the State of Trade was sent to William Bollan , one of the Massachusetts agents in London, but he only received the cover letter, and that was not until April 10, 1764, five days after the king had signed the law . Jasper Mauduit , another agent of the colony in London, began in February and March of that year, in the absence of new instructions from Boston, to draft a petition to Grenville on his own initiative and to persuade the agents of the other colonies to support it; however, efforts to cooperate proved difficult. Finally, in addition to Mauduit, only three other agents signed for Rhode Island, New Hampshire and New York. It is doubtful whether the filing ever attracted Grenville’s attention, and it did not come up in parliamentary debates.

Rhode Island

In Rhode Island , Stephen Hopkins , the governor of the colony, was himself the driving force behind the protest against the introduction of the Sugar Act. Hopkins had early recognized the importance of the press in influencing public opinion and was a founding member as well as a leading writer of the Providence Gazette , one of the Rhode Island newspapers. Here he published anonymously in two parts his essay on the Trade of the Northern Colonies of Great Britain in North America on January 14 and 21, 1764 , in which he warned in drastic words about the economic consequences of the law. Finally, he asked the governor of the colony - that is, himself - to convene the general assembly for an extraordinary session. This did not happen at first, but many of the leading traders and politicians followed the author's call to meet on January 23 in the courthouse in the small village of South Kingstown . These formed a committee (its members were not disclosed) which, along the lines of the Boston Society, drew up a pamphlet entitled State of Trade . Just one day later an extraordinary but official meeting of the General Assembly took place at the same location. Over the next few days, based on the State of Trade , she worked out an official remonstrance from the colony to the address of the British Parliament. However, it did not reach Providence until mid-February, when initially no ship was ready, so that the Remonstrance only reached London in April, when the law had already been signed. The responsibility for this delay was believed to have been borne by Henry Ward, the colony's secretary, with whom Hopkins had long been linked in an intimate private and political feud.

Passive and active resistance of the population

Acts of sabotage against the Royal Navy

The implementation of the Sugar Act soon led to sometimes violent conflicts between the population of the New England port cities on the one hand and the new customs officers and the Royal Navy on the other. The Navy in particular was soon rumored to be overzealous in combating smuggling. Since their officers became involved in the contraband they had confiscated and thus sensed a lucrative source of income, British warships now brought up every inconspicuous sloop in the coastal waters from Georgia to Massachusetts, even in the harbor waters and on the Delaware River up to Philadelphia . The relationship between the civilian population and the Navy has always been tense, as especially in war years, troops of the Navy sometimes landed and captured unsuspecting young men in order to " press " them into the naval service ; conversely, many naval deserters found an acquisition on merchant ships. Mutual mistrust increased with the Sugar Act, since the Navy now, even if it did not find any contraband, often tried to arrest sailors from the angry ships as alleged deserters and force them into service.

The colonists' countermeasures took many forms; Among the more harmless actions were anonymous letters from Boston merchants to the authorities in London complaining about the "indecent women" that the officers of the Navy allegedly brought with them to Boston and violated the morality there. In many ports it was ensured that no pilots were available when a warship called for escort; Pilots who took over this service were harassed. If smaller groups of Navy soldiers got lost on shore leave, they were often physically attacked by mobs . It did not always stop at physical fights; On a passenger ship commuting between Boston and Newfoundland, soldiers from the British warships HMS Cygnet and HMS Jamaica were even attacked with axes and thrown overboard in the autumn of 1764 . The resistance against the Navy was partly actively supported by the local colonial officials, for example in the case of the British schooner St. John , who cruised in Narragansett Bay in the summer of 1764 , harassed the coasters and also forced some residents of the surrounding area into their service. An attempt by a troop from St. John to land to capture a deserter was repulsed by a group of locals with a hail of stones, and they also succeeded in bringing an officer under their control and kidnapping them. Shortly afterwards, local farmers accused St. John soldiers of stealing chickens and pigs from them. The Sheriff of Newport then requested by the captain of the ship vain the extradition of thieves and turned then to the Council of the Governor. This instructed his militia to prevent the St. John from leaving Narrangansett Bay until the case was resolved. When the HMS St. John sailed anyway, the gunners of Fort George opened fire on the ship, which however escaped unscathed.

Acts of sabotage against the customs administration

In other cases, customs officers have been targeted. In the spring of 1765, for example, John Robinson, Newport's new customs officer, with the help of the Navy caught the suspicious Polly sloop on the coast near Dighton and set out for Newport to prepare a charge against the shipowner and a crew for the transfer of the confiscated boat. Shortly afterwards men with blackened faces outsmarted the security guards who had been left behind, unloaded the cargo including the sails, ropes and anchors and punched holes in the hull of the boat. When Robinson returned, he was arrested by a sheriff: the shipowner had sued him in the local court for £ 3,000 in damages for the loss of cargo and damage to his boat. Robinson was forced to walk eight miles to Taunton in front of a howling mob , where he was imprisoned for two days before a surety was found for him.

Despite the increased risk of being caught, smuggling continued to flourish, as at least the official statistics on tax revenues in the years after 1764 suggest. The experienced smugglers landed on remote stretches of coast and transported the cargo overland to the distilleries. The new generation of customs officials were not as open to attempted bribery as the old one, but alternatives were found. The American importers stationed agents on the West Indies to bribe the customs officers there and thus obtain false papers. In this arrangement, the molasses was first brought from the Dutch or French to the British sugar islands, where it was redeclared as local products and then shipped north.

Boycott British imports

Finally, in 1764, the first signs of an organized boycott of British goods appeared; this so-called non-importation movement became, in the further course of the American Revolution, an important means of economic pressure for the colonies against the mother country. In New England, newspaper articles encouraged the female population to overcome their vanity, forego imported fabrics and lace, and instead buy locally produced clothing. In Philadelphia, volunteer fire brigades vowed to stop consuming imported beer to support the city's breweries and not to eat lamb to stimulate domestic wool production. In New York a Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, Agriculture, and Economy was formed and praised rewards for the successful production of goods that had previously been imported. Robert R. Livingston noted that it was now frowned upon in the city to dress in imported clothes, and even Cadwallader Colden , the colony's governor, followed this new political fashion.

literature

swell

Contemporary documents on the Sugar Act and its consequences can be found in numerous English and American archives. Extensive source editions are available for the official documents of the parliaments and governors of most of the colonies. Relevant editions for university use with a selection of important certificates include:

  • Bernard Bailyn (Ed.): Pamphlets of the American Revolution, 1750–1776 . Volume I. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge 1965.
  • Edmund S. Morgan (Ed.): Prologue to Revolution: Sources and Documents on the Stamp Act Crisis, 1764-1766 . University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 1959, Reprint 2004. ISBN 0807856215

Some source editions are also available online, like this:

  • The Sugar Act - some contemporary pamphlets on the Massachusetts Historical Society website.

Secondary literature

  • Thomas C. Barrow: Trade and Empire: The British Customs Service in Colonial America, 1660-1775 . Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1967.
  • John L. Bullion : A Great and Necessary Measure: George Grenville and the Genesis of the Stamp Act, 1763-1765 . University of Missouri Press, Columbia 1982, ISBN 0826203752 .
  • Lawrence Henry Gipson : The British Empire before the American Revolution , Volume X: The Triumphant Empire: Thunder-Clouds Gather in the West, 1763-1766 . Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1961.
  • Allen S. Johnson: The Passage of the Sugar Act . In: The William and Mary Quarterly , Volume 3, Issue 16: 4, 1959, pp. 507-514.
  • Edmund S. Morgan and Helen M. Morgan: The Stamp Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution . University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 1953. New, expanded edition: University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 1995. ISBN 0807845132
  • John Philipp Reid: Constitutional History of the American Revolution , Volume II: The Authority to Tax . University of Wisconsin Press, Madison 1987. ISBN 0-299-11290-X
  • PDG Thomas: British Politics and the Stamp Act Crisis: The First Phase of the American Revolution, 1763-1767 . Clarendon Press, 1975. ISBN 0198224311
  • Frederick Bernays Wiener: The Rhode Island Merchants and the Sugar Act . In: The New England Quarterly 3: 3, 1930, pp. 464-500.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The long title reads: An act for granting certain duties in the British colonies and plantations in America ; for continuing, amending, and making perpetual, an act passed in the sixth year of the reign of his late majesty King George the Second, (intituled, An act for the better securing and encouraging the trade of his Majesty's sugar colonies in America;) for applying the produce of such duties, and of the duties to arise by virtue of the said act, towards defraying the expences of defending, protecting, and securing the said colonies and plantations; for explaining an act made in the twenty fifth year of the reign of King Charles the Second, (intituled, An act for the encouragement of the Greenland and Eastland trades, and for the better securing the plantation trade ;) and for altering and disallowing several drawbacks on exports from this kingdom, and more effectually preventing the clandestine conveyance of goods to and from the said colonies and plantation, and improving and securing the trade between the same and Great Britain. Danby Pickering (Ed.), The Statutes at Large , Vol. XXVI, J. Bentham, Cambridge 1764. pp. 33ff.
  2. ^ Gipson, The Triumphant Empire , p. 200.
  3. ↑ Gipson, The Triumphant Empire , pp. 185–193.
  4. ↑ On Bute's proposed legislation in 1763, see John L. Bullion: A Great and Necessary Measure , pp. 27–42.
  5. ^ Morgan and Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis , p. 22.
  6. ↑ Gipson, The Triumphant Empire , pp. 202-203.
  7. ^ Morgan and Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis , p. 22.
  8. ^ Gipson, The Triumphant Empire , p. 241.
  9. ↑ Gipson, The Triumphant Empire , pp. 204-205.
  10. ^ Gipson, The Triumphant Empire , p. 219.
  11. Jump up ↑ Fred Anderson: Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766 . Knopf, New York 2000, pp. 572-574.
  12. ^ Morgan and Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis , pp. 24-26 .; Gipson, The Triumphant Empire , pp. 226-227.
  13. ↑ Gipson, The Triumphant Empire , pp. 220-221.
  14. ^ Gipson, The Triumphant Empire , p. 225.
  15. ↑ Gipson, The Triumphant Empire , pp. 220-221.
  16. ↑ Gipson, The Triumphant Empire , pp. 227-228.
  17. ^ Gipson, The Triumphant Empire , pp. 228-229.
  18. ↑ Gipson, The Triumphant Empire , pp. 230–31.
  19. ↑ Thomas C. Barrow: Trade and Empire , pp. 182-184.
  20. ^ Charles M. Andrews : The Boston Merchants and the Non-Importation Movement , in: Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts. Transactions XIX, 1916-17, pp. 159-259, here p. 159.
  21. ^ Charles M. Andrews : The Boston Merchants and the Non-Importation Movement , in: Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts. Transactions XIX, 1916-17, pp. 160f.
  22. ^ Wiener, The Rhode Island Merchants , pp. 499-500.
  23. ^ Andrews, The Boston Merchants , p. 167.
  24. ^ Gipson, The Triumphant Empire , p. 225.
  25. ^ Morgan and Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis , p. 28.
  26. ^ Gipson, The Triumphant Empire , pp. 213-216.
  27. ^ Wiener, The Rhode Island Merchants , pp. 483-484.
  28. ^ Wiener, The Rhode Island Merchants , pp. 487-491.
  29. ^ Wiener, The Rhode Island Merchants , pp. 483-484.
  30. ^ Morgan and Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis , pp. 29-30.
  31. ^ Morgan and Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis , p. 30.
  32. ^ Morgan and Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis , p. 44.
  33. ^ Morgan and Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis , pp. 44-45.
  34. ↑ Morgan and Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis , pp. 45-48.
  35. ^ Gipson, The Triumphant Empire , pp. 241–242.
  36. ↑ Gipson, The Triumphant Empire , pp. 216-18.
  37. ^ Morgan and Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis , p. 33.
  38. ^ Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace: Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 . Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York 1999. pp. 196-197.