Great Britain’s newly-enlarged empire came with a price-tag that nearly doubled the British national debt from £75 million in 1756 to £133 million in 1763. Interest payments made up over half the national budget, and the ongoing presence of ten thousand troops in North America was a constant financial drain. The Empire needed more revenue and members of Parliament believed British subjects in North America should carry their share of the financial burden. The British government began raising taxes, even as interest groups at home lobbied to keep their own taxes low. Powerful aristocrats who were well represented in Parliament prevented the government raising taxes on land. The new tax burden, instead, fell on the lower classes through increased tariffs and duties that raised the prices of imports like sugar and tobacco. A new Whig government under Prime Minister [George Grenville](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Grenville) promised to rein in government spending and to make sure the American colonists did their part to pay down the massive debt. Grenville introduced the [Currency Act of 1764](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency_Act), prohibiting the colonies from printing their own paper money and bringing the American economy under greater British control. Grenville also pushed Parliament to pass the [Sugar Act of 1764](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_Act), which actually lowered duties on British molasses by half, from six pence per gallon to three, but which required violators of the [[Navigation Acts]] to be tried in vice-admiralty courts that operated without juries. Some colonists argued that trial by jury was a basic right of Englishmen. Depriving defendants of a jury, they contended, meant reducing liberty-loving British subjects to political slavery. To make their arguments seem more dramatic, some colonists equated this loss of liberty to the enslavement of Africans. To make matters worse, Prime Minister Grenville introduced the Stamp Act in early 1765. Under this act, anyone who used or purchased anything printed on paper had to buy a revenue stamp for it. Before the Stamp Act, the colonists had paid taxes only to their colonial governments or indirectly through higher prices, not directly to the royal governors. The Stamp Act meant that starting on November 1, 1765, the colonists would be expected to contribute £60,000 per year, which actually was only 17 percent of the total cost for the upkeep of the ten thousand British soldiers protecting North America. Parliament also asserted its power over the colonies with the  [Quartering Act of 1765](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartering_Acts), which required that soldiers be provided with barracks or allowed to stay in public houses, but also declared that if extra housing was necessary, soldiers could be housed in barns and other uninhabited private buildings. In addition, the costs of the soldiers’ food and lodging would be paid by the colonists. British colonists mistrusted the presence of a standing army during peacetime, and having to pay for the soldiers’ lodging and food was especially annoying. The law was ignored in almost all the colonies, but the issue was contentious in New York, the headquarters of British forces. When fifteen hundred troops arrived in New York in 1766, the colonial Assembly refused to follow the Quartering Act. ----- Next: [[6.7 Taxes Without Represntation]] Back: [[6.5 Proclamation]]