Equal Protection and Race........................................................................................................ 1839. Overview..............................................................................................................................
Sugar cane plantations in the colonies of the West Indies. The older Sugar and Molasses tax charged the customer a duty of 6 pence per gallon of molasses. The bribe to customs officials per gallon of smuggled molasses was 1.5p. The new Sugar Act lowered the duty to 3p per gallon.
The act lowered the duty on foreign molasses from six to three pence a gallon, raised the duties on foreign refined sugar, and increased the export bounty on British refined sugar bound for the colonies. These measures gave the British sugar planters an effective monopoly of the American sugar market.