in New York that her
assembly virtually shut down rather than acquiesce. Finally the New
Yorkers gave in, making the Quartering Act to New York what the Stamp
Act was to Virginia, a symbol of "oppression and slavery." What
parliament could do to one colony she could do to all.

A New Revenue Program

At the heart of the Grenville program were his financial schemes. The
program had three parts: 1) to strengthen and enforce existing Acts of
Trade; 2) to ease inflation and stabilize colonial trade with a uniform
currency act; and 3) to raise additional revenue by applying stamp
taxes to the colonies. Even then Grenville expected to raise only about
one-half the expenses the new empire required. The rest would have to
come from British sources.

To close the loopholes in the Navigation Acts and make them profitable,
Grenville submitted the American Revenue Act of 1764, popularly known
as the Sugar Act. Although the sugar trade provisions were the most
dramatic example of a redirection in the Navigation Acts, the American
Revenue Act contained radical departures from past attitudes and
practices. Heavy duties were applied to foreign goods allowed to enter
the colonies directly, including white sugar, Madeira wine, and coffee.
Many goods formerly allowed to enter the colonies directly were placed
on the list of enumerated articles which must pass through England
before being shipped to the colonies. The act, although slightly
reducing the duty on French West Indian foreign molasses, contained
strict provisions for its collection omitted from the laxly enforced
Molasses Act of 1733. The British fleet was stationed along the
American coast to assist the customs service in enforcing the act.

Parliament created a new vice-admiralty court to sit at Halifax without
a jury as an alternative to the colonial vice-admiralty courts whose
juries were notoriously biased against the customs officers and whose
judges often were colonials engaged in illicit trade.

In the Sugar Act, Grenville and parliament took the existing Navigation
Acts and reasserted parliamentary authority over imperial trade,
reaffirmed the 17th Century colonial philosophy that the colonies
existed to promote the welfare of the mother country and the empire,
granted trade monopolies to British merchants and manufacturers where
none existed before, and discriminated in favor of one set of colonies,
the British West Indies, and against another set, the North Am