Sugar Act Passed by Parliament

April 5, 1764

George Grenville's revenue act cut the molasses duty but enforced it seriously, hoping to raise 45,000 pounds a year from American smugglers. Boston merchants, who had been smuggling profitably for decades, discovered a sudden passion for constitutional principle. The phrase 'taxation without representation' entered the pamphlet war. James Otis argued in a widely reprinted essay that Parliament had no right to tax subjects who elected no members.