Pitt further declared that any taxation of the colonies without their representation in Parliament was tyranny, and that opposition to such taxation was a duty.  He vehemently insisted that the spirit shown by the Americans was the same that had withstood the despotism of the Stuarts in England (S436), and established the principle once for all that the King cannot take his subject’s money without that subject’s consent (S436).  So, too, Fox ardently defended the American colonists, and boldly maintained that the stand they had taken helped “to preserve the liberties of mankind."[1]

[1] See Bancroft’s “United States,” III, 107-108; “Columbia University Studies,” III, No. 2, “The Commercial Policy of England toward the American Colonies”; Lecky’s “American Revolution”; and C. K. Adams’s “British Orations.”

Against such opposition the law could not stand.  The act was accordingly repealed (1766), amid great rejoicing in London; the church bells rang out in triumph, and the shipping in the Thames was illuminated.  But the good effect on America was lost by the passage of another act which maintained the unconditional right of Parliament to legislate for the colonies, and to tax them, if it saw fit, without their consent.

551.  The Tea Tax and the “Boston Tea Party,” 1773, with its Results.

Another plan was now devised for getting money from the colonies.  Parliament enacted a law (1767) compelling the Americans to pay taxes on a number of imports, such as glass, paper, and tea.  In opposition to this law, the colonists formed leagues refusing to use these taxed articles, while at the same time they encouraged smugglers to land them secretly, and the regular trade suffered accordingly.

Parliament, finding that this was bad both for the government and for commerce, now abolished all of these duties except that on tea (1770).  That duty was retained for a double purpose:  first, and chiefly, to maintain the principle of the right of Great Britain to tax the colonies; and, next, to aid the East India Company, which was pleading piteeously for help.

In consequence mainly of the refusal of the American colonies to buy tea, the London warehouses of the East India Company were full to overflowing with surplus stock, and the company itself was in a half-bankrupt condition.  The custom had been for the company to bring the tea to England, pay a tax on it, and then sell it to be reshipped to America.  To aid the company in its embarrassment, the Government now agreed to remit this first duty altogether, and to impose a tax of only threepence (six cents) a pound on the consumers in America.

In itself the threepenny tax was a trifle, as the ship-money tax of twenty shillnigs was to John Hampden (S436); but underlying it was a principle which seemed to the Americans, as it had seemed to Hampden, no trifle; for such principles revolutions had been fought in the past; for such they would be fought in the future.