The Tea Tax and the Boston Port Bill: Europeans and Commons

Along with Tryon, who was afterwards recalled from New York, and Carleton, the governor of Canada, he was desired by the cabinet to declare his opinion whether the Americans, in the last extremity, would venture to resist the arms of Britain. Hutchinson confidently predicted that they would either not fight at all, or at most offer no further opposition than what a few troops could easily quell. Carleton protested that America might certainly be conquered, but that a considerable army would be necessary for this purpose, and that, for himself, he would not venture to march against New York or Boston with a smaller force than ten thousand men. Tryon declared that Britain would require large armies and long efforts to bring America to her feet; that her power was equal to anything, but that all her power must be exerted in order to put the monster in chains. The representations of Hutchinson were the most congenial to the sentiments and the temper of the British government; and, unfortunately for England, they were corroborated by the kindred folly and ignorance of many British statesmen and officers. "The Americans are a degenerate race of Europeans; they have nothing of the soldier in them," was the customary language of men who were destined by their own defeats to illustrate the valor which they depreciated, and who learned too late to consider the Americans as a regenerated race of Europeans, in whom the energy of freemen more than supplied the mechanical expertness of severely-disciplined slaves. General Clarke. . declared in a company of learned men at London, and in the hearing of Dr. Franklin, that with a thousand British grenadiers he would undertake to march from one end of America to another. . Another general officer asserted in the House of Commons that "The Yankees (a foolish nickname which now began to be applied to the Americans) never felt bold."

The speeches of other military officers in Parliament, and of the prime minister, Lord North, conveyed ideas equally calculated to delude their countrymen and to inflame by contumely all the rage and courage which injustice and injury had already kindled in the Americans. "Believe me, my lords," said the Earl of Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty, in the House of Peers, "the first sound of a cannon will send the Americans a-running as fast as their feet can carry them." Unfortunately for his country, he was believed.

During the period here indicated the population of America was rapidly increasing. We have few statistics, but these are very suggestive. Seventeen thousand three hundred and fifty emigrants reached America from the north of Ireland alone in 1771 and 1772. In the first fortnight of August, 1773, three thousand five hundred emigrants from Ireland landed at Philadelphia. Many others came from Scotland, Holland, Germany, and elsewhere. The country was fast filling up with people who had been oppressed at home and who were in the proper temper to strike for liberty abroad.

With the infatuation which had all along marked the acts of Parliament and the ministry, new measures of coercion were now adopted, calculated to increase the irritation of the colonists. Exasperated by the opposition to the sale of tea in America, and in particular by its destruction at Boston, the ministry determined on more stringent measures, and selected this town as the culprit to be disciplined. A bill was hastily passed, suspending the trade and closing the harbor of Boston. It was followed by another bill destroying the representative government of Massachusetts, by declaring that the provincial council should be appointed by the crown, that the royal governor should appoint and remove all important executive officers, and that no town meeting should be held without written permission from the governor.

Other stringent measures were passed, despite the warning protest of an old member of the House of Commons: "If there ever was a nation running headlong to its ruin, it is this." The tidings of the passage of these bills produced universal indignation in America. Philadelphia made a liberal contribution in aid of the poorer inhabitants of Boston who might be injured by the operation of the Port Bill. In Virginia a day of fasting and prayer was ordered, and Jefferson published an indignant protest. Strong feeling was exhibited in all the other provinces.]