John Hancock was a leading merchant, and one of the wealthiest men in the colonies. He used his wealth to support the revolutionary cause and was the first to sign the Declaration of Independence.

Beyond that, one of the early grudges the colonists had against Britain was the sugar tax. This particular grievance has always struck me as being a little odd.

In fact the colonists were accustomed to to paying tax on sugar (really it was more about the molasses needed to make rum I think). There had a been a tax on that for a long time. The tax was something like 4 pence a unit, sorry I can't remember the amount of sugar that tax was laid on. However due to corrupt, and basically unsupervised tax collectors the merchants in the colonies generally paid them, like 1.5 pence to look the other way.

The Crown was deeply in debt after the 7 Years war, the French Indian War, and needed to raise money. Grenville, the Prime Minister, or rather the office that would become known as Prime Minister needed to raise funds to pay off this debt. It seemed only fair, to him and Parliament, that the colonists help pay off some of this debt as the war had been, at least in part, to protect them.

So he comes up with a plan, the sugar tax (as well as the stamp act and the tea tax). But what I find so interesting about the sugar tax is that it was, in fact, a tax cut. He reduces to the tax from 4 pence to 2 pence. The thinking was that if the tax were lower, it would be simpler, and safer, for the merchants to simply pay it than to risk arrest for bribery. In this way the Crown would actually see some of the revenue of the tax, a tax which had already been in place.

It may be the first time in history a population fought against a tax cut.

The thing is he also put in harsh penalties for smuggling, non payment of the taxes. These included changing the jurisdiction of such cases from civil courts to the admiralty. Which meant if you were accused of smuggling you had to report to the admiralty courts, which were, I believe, in Newfoundland. And at those courts, you were generally assumed guilty until proven innocent. This was a huge expense and it fell mainly on the merchants in the colonies.

The tea tax had a similar affect on the merchants. So merchants in the colonies were closely tied to the revolutionary cause and often helped organize the "mob" violence that took place early on. Such as destroying tax collectors homes, and of course the famouse, Boston Tea Party. They often supported it quite strongly, as with the case of Hancock, and often had some of the greatest grievances, at least early on.