Tea Party
In 1770, a new prime minister, Lord North, believing it unwise for England to hamper the sale of its own wares in outside markets, secured the repeal of most of the Townshend duties. At the request of King George III the duty on tea was retained, in order to assert the right of England to tax the colonies. The American merchants accepted this compromise, and the agitation in the colonies soon died down. The remaining duty was evaded by smuggling: the odious tax was not paid on about nine tenths of the tea imported after 1770.
Then, in 1773, Parliament passed another act that set all the elements of discord in motion. This measure allowed the British East India Company to ship tea to the colonies without paying any of the import duties collected in England. The nearly bankrupt company had on hand an immense quantity of unsold tea. It could now sell this tea more cheaply in the colonies than local merchants, who had to pay high duties, could sell the tea that they imported. The company was quite willing to pay the Townshend tax of threepence a pound when its tea was unloaded in America.
In the colonies
this cheap tea was greeted as a bribe offered to the people for their consent
to a British tax. The merchants everywhere were alarmed. If the East India
Company could receive a monopoly for the sale of one article, it might
receive other privileges and thus deprive the local merchants of most of
the colonial trade. In New York and Philadelphia the company's ships were
not allowed to land. Meanwhile, in Boston, a group of citizens disguised
as Indians tossed L15,000 worth of the offensive tea into the harbor. This
incident, afterward known as the Boston Tea Party, brought about the greatest
pre-Revolutionary War crisis, for it was the first act of resistance to
end in the destruction of a large amount of private property. Since the
East India Company was carrying out a British law, Lord North and George
III felt that the colonial opposition must not go unchallenged.