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Updated: June 2, 2025
England had no right to tax the colonies, nor had she ever pretended to do so before Grenville's Stamp Act; that, as well as the most important duties of the Revenue Act, had been repealed; the tea-duty was slight and it produced short of nothing, the cost of collection devouring it to the bone; for the Americans refused to buy imported tea, and they were right to do so; having inherited English principles they resisted for the same reason for which Hampden had resisted the payment of the trifling ship-money, because the principle on which it was demanded would have made him a slave.
The ministers conceived themselves forced to assert the dignity of the crown, and proposed bills to inflict severe punishment on both the City of Boston and the whole Province of Massachusetts. The Opposition insisted on removing the cause of these disturbances by a total repeal of the tea-duty.
I accordingly proposed the tea-duty as the most palatable; because, though it answered the main purpose of those with whom taxation was a favorite measure, it was doing America an immediate benefit, for I procured the shilling a pound duty to be taken off, and threepence to be laid on in lieu thereof; so that, in fact, it was ninepence a pound saved to America.
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.
The tea-duty and the obnoxious acts of 1774 were repealed, the principles of colonial independence of Parliament laid down by Otis and Henry were admitted, and commissioners were sent over to America to negotiate terms of peace.
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