No bids, and a shove

What happened

In 1764 Parliament raised the stakes on the old molasses trade. The American Revenue Act tightened the duty, sent naval officers after smugglers, and gave the vice admiralty courts, which sat without juries, the last word. Merchants dodged the new rules where they could, and now and then they used force. In late November 1764 Robert Heron, a customs collector in Maryland, seized a ship with a cargo of molasses. A vice admiralty court condemned the cargo, and it was advertised for auction at the local tavern. The owner of the ship, a man named Graham, got the merchants to promise to boycott the sale. At the auction Graham assaulted Heron and threw him out of the tavern. Rothbard says such forcible measures were rare. But the temper of America was plain enough that British officers thought it wiser not to anger the colonists by sending cases to the new admiralty court at Halifax, so far away that Judge Spry languished there with little to do. Even Governor Bernard of Massachusetts, a staunch Tory, urged that it be moved to the mainland (CiL, p. 826). Britain drew up plans for three new courts on the mainland, but the Stamp Act furor swallowed them.