In 1751 a similar measure had been passed that was limited to only the New England colonies, but the 1764 measure was to include all of North America. The British enacted the law because colonial currency had been highly inflationary, and as a result, a note issued by a colony was not equal to a note of the same denomination in Great Britain. Colonists used their own notes to pay off debts to British merchants, thereby cheating their creditors of their full due. The simplest way to avoid this problem was to prevent the colonies from printing money. From the colonists' point of view, the law was unjust. Because colonial debt increased rapidly in the years around mid-century, there was a constant drain of hard specie--that is, colonial Americans sent whatever gold and silver coin they had to Great Britain to pay their debts. It was therefore difficult to make transactions of any kind since there was so little hard currency available. Notes printed by colonies, even inflationary notes, thus had an important use in the colonial economy. Edmund and Helen M. Morgan The Stamp Act Crisis “To further complicate the situation, the currency restriction was passed at about the same time as new parliamentary taxation--the Sugar Act (1764) and the Stamp Act (1765)--which increased the demand for more hard currency.” While the Currency…