The ex-slaves demand for high wages increased production cost. Their recklessness on the job also increased the production cost on the plantations. Again, this scenario arose before 1846. The planters in the BWI, under free trade, would also have to compete against slave grown sugar from foreign markets.
Another challenge that the plantocracy in declining British colonies faced was the development of beet sugar in the 1870's. The beet sugar was yet again another source of competition to the BWI that flooded the market, sending the price of sugar down. This however, presented itself years after the Sugar Act.
Hence, lack of new technology, emancipation, beet sugar, rise in production costs and other scenarios like absentee ownership, neglect of administration, lack of investment and capital were all problems that contributed to the decline of the British sugar industry before and in the case of beet sugar, years later, after the 1846 Sugar Act. The effect then of the 1846 Act merely served to aggravate the problems that already existed in the economy and remove a protection that had been a possible way out of further economic crisis.
The planters, however, faced with the removal of preferential protection that had served as a possible way out of economic ruin, massively protested the Act. While they fought for protectionism, the colonies demanded compensation for the Act, they wanted the imperial Government to destroy the slave trade that supplied their competition with free labour, demanded free access to the coast of Africa to procure free immigrant labour, removal of restrictions on rum and molasses and later the abolishment of the Navigation Act.
Their demands were not fully granted. They were not given access to the coast of Africa but rather allowed to recruit elsewhere. The tax on rum was lowered but not eliminated. They were given full liberty to regulate their own customs duties, to abolish restrictions on foreign goods and to eliminate differential duties which favoured the mother country.
