Molasses Act of 1733
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| Long title | An act for the better securing and encouraging the trade of his Majesty's sugar colonies in America. |
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| Citation | 6 Geo II. c. 13 |
| Introduced by | The Rt Hon. Sir Robert Walpole, KG, KB, MP |
| Territorial extent | British America and the British West Indies |
| Dates | |
| Royal assent | 17 May 1733 |
| Commencement | 24 June 1733 (in part) 25 December 1733 (entire act) |
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Status: Repealed
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The Molasses Act of March 1733 was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain (citation 6 Geo II. c. 13), which imposed a tax of six pence per gallon on imports of molasses from non-English colonies. Parliament created the act largely at the insistence of large plantation owners in the British West Indies. The Act was not passed for the purpose of raising revenue, but rather to regulate trade by making British products cheaper than those from the French West Indies. The Molasses Act greatly affected the significant colonial molasses trade.
The Molasses Act of 1733 provided:
... there shall be raised, levied, collected and paid, unto and for the use of his Majesty ..., upon all rum or spirits of the produce or manufacture of any of the colonies or plantations in America, not in the possession or under the dominion of his Majesty ..., which at any time or times within or during the continuance of this act, shall be imported or brought into any of the colonies or plantations in America, which now are or hereafter may be in the possession or under the dominion of his Majesty ..., the sum of nine pence, money of Great Britain, ... for every gallon thereof, and after that rate for any greater or lesser quantity: and upon all molasses or syrups of such foreign produce or manufacture as aforesaid, which shall be imported or brought into any of the said colonies or plantations ..., the sum of six pence of like money for every gallon thereof ...; and upon all sugars and paneles of such foreign growth, produce or manufacture as aforesaid, which shall be imported into any of the said colonies or plantations ... a duty after the rate of five shillings of like money, for every hundred weight Avoirdupois....
Historian Theodore Draper described British intent on the tax as it would affect the American colonies:
Bladen [Col. Main Bladen who was a longtime member of the British Board of Trade] had conceived of the strategy of inflicting a prohibitive duty on imports from the French West Indies instead of simply disallowing them. When he was confronted with the argument that the proposed bill would result in the ruin of the North American colonies, he replied, “that the duties proposed would not prove an absolute prohibition, but he owned that he meant them as something that should come very near it, for in the way the northern colonies are, they raise the French Islands at the expense of ours, and raise themselves also [to]o high, even to an independency.”
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