Step by step the mother country and its colonies were advancing to a rupture. The first step was taken at the test concerning the writs of assistance, the second at the passage of the Stamp Act and its repeal, the third resulted in the Massacre and the withdrawal of the troops from Boston. Each time the colonies gained the practical advantages which they sought; each time the king's party, while yielding, became more exasperated, and presently tested the strength of the colonies once more; and each time it was Boston that stood as the head and front of opposition. The town was marked for martyrdom.

In the case of the Townshend Acts, the victory of the colonists was temporarily complete. The movement had come to a head at Boston in an actual outbreak, the Massacre, which obscured the greater issues; nevertheless the issues were won. America would not submit to the new revenue laws. Very calmly it had avoided them by refusing to import from England. A thorough test of nearly two years showed that from north to south the colonies were almost a unit in rejecting English and foreign goods, and in relying on home manufactures. From importations of more than a million and a quarter pounds, two-thirds fell clean away,[28] and the merchants of England felt the pinch. There was but one thing to do, and England grudgingly did it. The withdrawal of the troops from Boston was acquiesced in, and the revenue acts, the cause of all the trouble, were repealed, except for a duty still maintained upon tea.

The response was such that England was relieved. New York began to import those articles which had been made free of duty. The non-importation agreement was broken, as the colonies perceived. "You had better send us your old liberty pole," wrote Philadelphia scornfully to New York, "since you clearly have no further use for it."[29] Whigs and Tories both saw that, the agreement thus broken, other colonies would follow the example of New York.

The advantage was now clearly with the king, and he endeavored to make the most of it, not by abiding in peace, but by taking a further step. He ordered that colonial judges should in future be paid from the English treasury. No one in the colonies could fail to see that the blow was aimed directly at the independence of the judiciary.

Massachusetts was alarmed. Boston sent resolutions to the governor, but Hutchinson, now at last in the chair, refused to listen to the town meeting. In this moment of indignation, Samuel Adams conceived a scheme which was the longest step yet taken toward independence.

This was the idea of Committees of Correspondence, to be permanently maintained by each town and even by each colony. The idea of such committees was not novel. It had been suggested years before by Jonathan Mayhew, and had more than once been used in emergencies. But permanent committees, watching affairs and at any time ready to act, were new. Naturally composed of the best men in each town, they would at all times be ready to speak, and to speak vigorously. The plan, when perfected, eventually enabled the colonies to act as a unit. From the first it gave strength to the Americans; in the present instance it spread the news of the king's action and roused indignation, and before long it brought about an act which startled the English-speaking world.

This was the Boston Tea-Party. The king had a hand in making the fire hot. He had been vexed by his unsuccessful tariff, and was now especially irritated that his concessions had brought about no result in one important particular.

Until the present every shipmaster had been a smuggler, and all the Whigs dealt in smuggled goods. This was according to old English practice, but as a matter of fact illicit trade was more decorous in America than in England. Whereas in Cornwall the forces of the smugglers were so strong that they chased the revenue cutters into harbors and landed their goods by bright moonlight, in America the appearances of legality were gravely preserved.

Nevertheless the result was the same, and in one quarter was actually serious. The recent tariff had brought to the royal treasury scarcely three hundred pounds from tea. The situation was no better now that the tea-duty was the only one remaining. So completely did America, while still drinking tea in quantity, avoid the duly imported article, that the revenue of the East India Company fell off alarmingly. On pathetic representations of the financial state of the company, the king gave permission, through a subservient Parliament, for the company to export tea to America free even of the English duty. The company had lost hundreds of thousands of pounds since the Townshend Acts went in force; now by favorable terms it was to be enabled to undersell in the colonial market even the smuggled teas. Taking advantage of this new ruling, tea was promptly shipped, in the autumn of 1773, to different consignees in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston.

It was confidently expected that the colonies would buy the tea. No one in the government supposed that the Americans would be blind to their own interests. This much, indeed, was admitted by the leaders among the Whigs, that once the tea was on sale Yankee principle might be sorely tempted by Yankee thrift. Indignant at the insidious temptation, determined that no such test should be made, and resenting the establishment of a practical monopoly throughout the colonies, the leaders resolved that the tea should not be landed.

It is an odd fortune that connected the Chinese herb so closely with the struggle of principle in America. To this day, while the issues are obscured in the mind of the average American, he remembers the tax on tea, and that his ancestors would not pay it. Picturesque tales of ladies' associations depriving themselves of their favorite beverage, of men tarring and feathering unpopular tradesmen, have survived the hundred and thirty odd years which have passed since then; and the impression is general that the colonists would not pay a tax which bore heavy on them. But it will be noticed by those who have attentively read this account that the colonists were refusing to pay less, in order that they might have the satisfaction of paying more. They balked, not at the amount of the tax, but at its principle.

In the case of the tea-ships the duty of action fell upon Boston. Charleston and Philadelphia had taken a positive stand resolving not to receive the tea; but the ships were due at Boston first. The eyes of the continent were upon this one town. Boston made ready to act, yet of the preparations we know nothing. While the story as it is told is interesting enough, there is no record of the secret meetings in which the events were prepared. Hints are dropped, and it is asserted that within the Green Dragon tavern, a favorite meeting-place of the Whigs, were finally decided the means by which the workmen of the town should carry out the plans of the leaders. But of these meetings nothing is positively known; all we can say with certainty is that the plans worked perfectly, and that Sam Adams must have had a hand in their making.

The Sons of Liberty took the first step toward forcing the consignees of the tea to resign. "Handbills are stuck up," writes John Andrews, "calling upon Friends! Citizens! and Countrymen!" To Liberty Tree the "freemen of Boston and the neighboring towns" were invited, by placard and advertisement, "to hear the persons, to whom the tea shipped by the East India Company is consigned, make a public resignation of their office as consignees, upon oath."[30]

But the consignees did not come, though the freemen did. The townspeople, forming themselves into a "meeting," sent a committee to the consignees, demanding that they refuse to receive the tea. But the consignees believed themselves safe. They were merchants of family and property, the governor's sons were among them, and it was rumored that Hutchinson had a pecuniary interest in the success of the venture. They refused to give the pledge.

The official town meeting now took up the matter. Before the tea arrived, and again after the appearance of the first ship, the town called upon the consignees to resign. Each time the consignees refused. The second town meeting, after thus acting in vain, dissolved without the customary expression of opinion. Hutchinson himself records that "this sudden dissolution struck more terror into the consignees than the most minatory resolves." From that moment the matter was in the hands of the Boston Committee of Correspondence.

By means of the committee, at whose head was Adams, communication was held with the towns throughout Massachusetts. The province was greatly excited, and repeated demands for resignation were made upon the consignees, but they clung to their offices and the hope of profit. Delays were skilfully secured, and the first ship was entered at the customs, after which according to law it must within twenty days either clear for England or land its cargo. The governor was resolved not to grant a clearance, and rejoiced over his opponents. "They find themselves," he said, "in invincible difficulties."

But everything was prepared. To the last minute of the twenty days the Whigs were patient. Petition after petition, appeal after appeal, went to the governor or the consignees. There was no success. On the last day, the 16th of December, 1773, all three of the tea-ships were at Griffin's Wharf, watched by the patriots. A town meeting, the largest in the history of Boston, crowded the Old South, and again resolved that the tea should not be landed. "Who knows," asked John Rowe, "how tea will mingle with salt water?" The remark was greeted with cheers, yet one more legal step might be taken, and the meeting, sending Rotch, the master of the first tea-ship, to the governor at Milton to ask for a clearance, patiently waited while he should traverse the fifteen miles of his journey. During the hours of his absence there was no disturbance; when he returned, the daylight had gone, and the Old South was lighted with candles. Seven thousand people were silent to hear the report. It was brief, and its meaning was clear: the governor had refused; the last legal step had been taken. Then Samuel Adams rose.

"This meeting," he declared, "can do nothing more to save the country."

It was the expected signal. Immediately there was a shout from the porch, and the warwhoop sounded out of doors. The meeting poured out of doors and followed some fifty men in the garb of Indians, who suddenly appeared in the street. They hurried to Griffin's Wharf. There they posted guards, took possession of the tea-ships, and hoisting the chests from the holds, knocked them open and emptied the tea into the water. Under the moon the great crowd watched in silence, there was no interference from the troops or the war-ships, and in three hours the last of the tea was overboard. Nothing remained except what had sifted into the shoes of some of the "Indians," to be preserved as mementoes of the day.

"They say," wrote John Andrews dryly two days later, "that the actors were Indians from Narragansett. Whether they were or not, to a transient observer they appear'd as such, being cloath'd in Blankets with the heads muffled, and copper color'd countenances, being each arm'd with a hatchet or axe, and pair pistols, nor was their dialect different from what I conceive these geniusses to speak, as their jargon was unintelligible to all but themselves. Not the least insult was offer'd to any person, save one Captain Conner, a letter of horses in this place, not many years since remov'd from dear Ireland, who had ript up the lining of his coat and waistcoat under the arms, and watching his opportunity had nearly fill'd 'em with tea, but being detected, was handled pretty roughly. They not only stripp'd him of his cloaths, but gave him a coat of mud, with a severe bruising into the bargain; and nothing but their utter aversion to make any disturbance prevented his being tar'd and feather'd."

Such was the Boston Tea-Party, "the boldest stroke," said Hutchinson, "that had yet been struck in America." Much has been written about it. It has been minimized into a riot and magnified into a deed of glory. As a matter of fact, it was neither the one nor the other, yet if either it was nearer the latter. Carried out by Boston mechanics, but doubtless directed by Boston leaders, it was a cool and deliberate law-breaking, the penalty for which, could the offenders but have been discovered, would have been severe. But none of the actors in the affair were betrayed at the time, though hundreds in the town must have had positive knowledge of their identity. Names, like those of the burners of the Gaspee eighteen months before, were not given out until after the Revolution, and even to-day the list of them is not complete.

The project of the king and the East India Company was a failure. In one way or other the other three seaports either destroyed or sent back their tea. But Boston was the first and most violent offender. It was on her that punishment was to descend.

The news of the Tea-Party came to England at a time when king and Parliament were less amiably disposed than usual toward Massachusetts. Some weeks before had happened the affair of the Hutchinson letters. Benjamin Franklin, then Postmaster-General of England, and agent for Massachusetts, had secured possession of certain letters written by Governor Hutchinson and by others in office in the colony. These letters proved beyond doubt that the Massachusetts officials had been secretly urging upon the home government repressive measures against the colony. This was but what Bernard had done, and what had been suspected of his successor; yet the actual proof was too much for Franklin. He sent the letters, under pledge of secrecy, home to be read by the leaders among the Massachusetts Whigs. But the pledge of secrecy could not be kept. The letters were read in the Assembly and then published. "He had written," says Bancroft of Hutchinson, "against every part of the Constitution, the elective character of the Council, the annual choice of the Assembly, the New England organization of the towns; had advised and solicited the total dependence of the judiciary on the Crown, had hinted at making the experiment of declaring Martial Law, and of abrogating English liberty; had advised to the restraint of the commerce of Boston and the exclusion of the Province from the fisheries."[31] Hutchinson's defence was that he "had never wrote any public or private letter that tends to subvert the Constitution." But he was thinking of the Constitution rather than the Charter. The province was thoroughly roused, and sent to England a firm yet respectful petition demanding his dismissal.

But Hutchinson had been serving the king as the king wished to be served. The wrath of the government fell upon Franklin. In a crowded meeting of the Privy Council, with scant respect for the forms of law, Franklin was subjected to elaborate abuse. There were none to defend him who could gain a respectful hearing; he stood immovable under the tongue-lashing of the Solicitor-General, and made no reply. "I have never," he said afterwards, "been so sensible of the power of a good conscience, for if I had not considered the thing for which I have been so much insulted, as one of the best actions of my life, and what I should certainly do again in the same circumstances, I could not have supported it."[32] The suit which he wore that day he put carefully away, and did not wear it again until as Commissioner for the United States he signed in Paris the treaty of alliance with France.

Franklin was deprived of his office under the crown, and the king who directed the punishment, the council who condemned him, and the Parliament which cheered them both on, were not yet satisfied. When the news of the Tea-Party came, they felt that their chance had come to strike at the real culprit. The king consulted General Gage, who was fresh from Boston, and listened eagerly to his fatally mistaken account of the situation. "He says," wrote the king to Lord North, "'They will be lions while we are lambs; but if we take the resolute part they will undoubtedly prove very meek.' Four regiments sent to Boston will, he thinks, be sufficient to prevent any disturbance."[33] On such a basis the king and his prime minister planned the laws which should punish the town of Boston.

The first act was the Boston Port Bill. It closed the port to all commerce until the East India Company should be paid for its tea, and the king satisfied that the town was repentant. Nothing except food and fuel was to be brought to the town in boats; in fact, as Lord North promised the Commons, Boston was to be removed seventeen miles from the ocean. For Salem was made the port of entry, and there the governor and the collector, the surveyor and the comptroller, and all underlings were to go. It was planned to station war-ships in Boston Harbor to enforce the law.

The second law was the "Bill for the better Regulating the Government of the Massachusetts Bay," generally called the Regulating Act. This virtually swept away the charter of Massachusetts. It provided first that the Council was to be appointed by the king, and next that without the consent of the Council the governor might appoint or remove all officers of justice, from judges to constables. By the provisions of the law even the jury lists could be controlled by appointive officers. Finally town meetings were made illegal throughout the province, except for the election of town officers, and other necessary local business.

The third proposal of the government was a bill "for the Impartial Administration of Justice," in proposing which "it was observed that Lord North trembled and faultered at every word of his motion." It provided that magistrates, officers, or soldiers might be tried for "murder, or any other capital offence," in Great Britain.

The fourth act made provision for quartering troops in Boston.

The bills went through Parliament without much opposition. Says Trevelyan, "Even after the lapse of a century and a quarter the debates are not pleasant reading for an Englishman."[34] It was assumed that the punishment was just, and that not only Boston but also the whole continent would take it meekly. A few voices were raised in protest, but as a rule even the Opposition was silent. One by one the bills became law. One more step was taken toward separation.

[28] Trevelyan, "American Revolution," Part I, 104.