A History of the American People

the Canon and Feudal Law (1768), which argued that the tax was unconstitutional and unlawful
and so invalid. It says a lot for the fair-mindedness of Britain in these years before the conflict
broke out openly that Adams published this philippic in London. But it is important to note that
Adams, then and later, was not a man who believed in force if arguments were still listened to.
Unlike his cousin Sam Adams, and other men of the mobs, he deplored street violence in Boston
and, as a lawyer, was prepared to defend the soldiers accused of the Massacre.' The breaking- point for him came in 1773-4 when North, by an extraordinary act of folly, made British power in Boston look not only weak, vindictive, and oppressive, but ridiculous. The origins of the Boston Tea Party had nothing to do with America. The East India Company had got itself into a financial mess. To help it to extricate itself, North passed an Act which, among other things, would allow the company to send its tea direct to America, at a reduced price, thus encouraging therebels' to consume it. Delighted, the harassed company quickly
dispatched three ships, loaded with 298 chests of tea, worth £10,994 to Boston. At the same time,
the authorities stepped up measures against smuggling. The American smuggling interest, which
in one way or another included about 9o percent of import-export merchants, was outraged. John
Hancock (1737-93), a prominent Boston merchant and political agitator, was a respectable large-
scale smuggler and considered this maneuver a threat to his livelihood as well as a constitutional
affront. He was one of many substantial citizens who encouraged the Boston mob to take
exemplary action.
When the ships docked on December 16, 177 3, a crowd gathered to debate what to do at the
Old South Meeting House. It is reported 7,000 people were jammed inside. Negotiations were
held with the ship-masters. One rode to Governor Hutchinson at his mansion on Milton Hill to
beg him to remit the duties. He refused. When this news was conveyed to the mob, a voice said:
Who knows how tea will mingle with salt water?' Sam Adams, asked to sum up, saidin a low
voice,' This meeting can do nothing more to save the country.' The doors were then burst open and a thousand men marched to the docks. There had been preparations. An eyewitness, John Andrews, said thatthe patriots' were 'cloath'd in blankets with the heads muffled, and
coppercolor'd countenances, being each arm'd with a hatchet or axe, and a pair of pistols.' The
Red Indians' ran down Milk Street and onto Griffith's Wharf, climbed aboard the Dartmouth, chopped open its teachests, and then hurled the tea into the harbor,where it piled up in the low
tide like haystacks.' They then attacked the Eleanor and the Beaver. By nine in the evening all
three ships had been stripped of their cargo. Josiah Quincy (1744-75), one of the leading Boston
pamphleteers and spokesmen, said: No one in Boston will ever forget this night,' which will lead to the most trying and terrific struggle this country ever saw.' John Adams, shrewdly noting that
no one had been injured, let alone killed, saw the act, though one of force, as precisely the kind
of dramatization of a constitutional point that was needed. As he put it: The people should never rise without doing something to be remembered, something notable and striking. This destruction to the tea is so bold, so daring, so firm, intrepid and inflexible, and it must have so important consequences, and so lasting, that I can't but consider it an epoch of history. Adams was quite right. The episode had the effect of forcing everyone on both sides of the Atlantic to consider where they stood in the controversy. It polarized opinion. The Americans, or most of them, were exhilarated and proud. The English, or most of them, were outraged. Dr Johnson saw the Tea Party as theft and hooliganism and produced his maxim:Patriotism is the
last refuge of a scoundrel.' In March 1774, on the invitation of the government, parliament closed
the port of Boston to all traffic and two months later passed the Coercive Acts. These punitive
measures, paradoxically, were accompanied by the Quebec Act, a highly liberal measure which