ith the Massachusetts governor. The
Peace of Paris was scarcely signed before Charles Townshend, First Lord
of Trade in Bute's Ministry, proposed that the authority of Parliament
should be invoked to remodel the colonial Governments upon a uniform
plan, to pass stringent laws for enforcing the Trade Acts, and by
taxation to raise a revenue in America for paying the salaries of royal
officials and for the maintenance of such British troops as might be
stationed there for the defense of the colonies. Townshend's proposals
would doubtless have been formulated into law had it not been for the
fall of Bute's Ministry in April; but the measures which were finally
carried by Grenville, if they left the colonial charters untouched, were
no less comprehensive, in respect to the purely imperial matters of
trade and defense, than those initiated by his brilliant predecessor.

Adequate and well-administered laws for advancing the trade and securing
the defense of the empire were, indeed, the primary objects of
Grenville's colonial legislation. Grenville, who was the fingers rather
than the soul of good government, could not endure the lax
administration of the customs service which in the course of years had
given the colonies, as it were, a vested interest in non-enforcement. He
accordingly set himself to correct the faults which Walpole had
condoned in the interest of the Hanoverian succession, and which
Newcastle had utilized in the service of the Whig faction. Commissioners
of the customs, long regarding their offices as sinecures and habitually
residing in England, were ordered to repair at once to their posts in
America. Additional revenue officers were appointed with more rigid
rules for the discharge of their duties. Governors were once more
instructed to give adequate support in the enforcement of the Trade
Acts. The employment of general writs, or "writs of assistance," was
authorized to facilitate the search for goods illegally entered; and
ships of war were stationed on the American coast to aid in the
suppression of smuggling.

More careful administrative supervision was but the prelude to
additional legislation. Throughout the eighteenth century, the trade of
the Northern and Middle colonies with the French and Spanish West Indies
had been one of the most extensive branches of colonial commerce. To
divert this traffic to the British sugar islands, Walpole had carried
the Molasses Act in 1733. But the Molasses Act, th