The British Parliament 131
none at all, they regarded this measure as a new device to impose taxation, and
hence a revival of the dispute that had lain dormant for three years.
When the Boston men dumped the company’s tea in the harbor the British
government lost all patience. This new outrage seemed the latest act in almost ten
years of political rowdyism. For years the firebrands at Boston had raised up mobs,
mocked the courts and the governor, taken the lead in convening illegal assem-
blages. They had now gone too far. “All men seem now to feel,” wrote the King,
“that the fatal compliance in 1766 has encouraged the Americans annually to in-
crease in their pretensions.”^32 Never had King George been more in agreement
with his people. Even British merchants now felt little sympathy for the Ameri-
cans. They resented the losses due to American non- importation agreements, but
had made them good by increase of sales to Europe. There was a widespread feel-
ing in Britain that British policy had been proved mistaken since the repeal of the
Stamp Act, that the time had come to show the Americans their place.
Boston was in truth in a disturbed state, and it was in truth a real problem to set
up a government there in which law would be respected. One way would have
been to refashion the government so as to obtain the support of politically impor-
tant or vociferous elements. This might, indeed, have led far afield; when Governor
Hutchinson observed, before the Tea Party, that he saw no middle ground between
parliamentary supremacy and colonial independence, the Massachusetts House of
Representatives had intimated its preference for independence, as between the
two. The way chosen by the British government was in part temporary coercion,
and in part to reform the government of Massachusetts without further consulta-
tion of the inhabitants.
The Boston Port Act closed the harbor of Boston until the town paid damages
to the East India Company. It passed the Commons without a division. The other
“coercive acts,” including the Massachusetts Government Act, though the Whigs
objected to them in debate, went through by majorities of four to one. “The die is
now cast,” said the King; “the colonies must now submit or triumph.” And when
General Gage wrote a few months later from Boston that perhaps the Coercive
Acts should be suspended, George III thought it absurd to coddle the Americans
any further. “We must either master them or totally leave them to themselves and
treat them as aliens.”^33
The die was cast, indeed. It was cast when the British Parliament attempted to
alter the structure of government in Massachusetts. This attempt presented the
issue of parliamentary authority over the colonies in the plainest terms. The act
unified Massachusetts behind the Boston insurgents, and it rallied the other colo-
nies behind Massachusetts. It led directly to the First Continental Congress and
the Revolution. There was also another and in a way larger issue raised by the Mas-
sachusetts Government Act, for the nature of the British constitution itself was
brought into question. I have already said that everyone thought the British con-
stitution to be a good thing. But the arguments following upon the Act in both
32 Corr. Geo. III, III, 59.
33 Ibid., III, 131, 154.