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The Uprising Against the East India Company Author(s): Arthur Meier Schlesinger Source: Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 1 (Mar., 1917), pp. 60-79 Published by: Academy of Political Science Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2141797 Accessed: 14-02-2016 00:33 UTC
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THE UPRISING AGAINST THE EAST INDIA COMPANY,
IN March I770 the Townshend duties were repealed by Par- liament, except the tax on tea, which was retained, so said the king, because " there must always be one tax to
keep up the right."2 The news of the partial repeal caused great rejoicing in the great trading towns in the colonies, and the non-importation agreements, which had been launched against the Townshend taxes, were modified to operate against dutied tea only.3 Then followed nearly two years of calm, un- ruffled by any further act of aggression from the home govern- ment or the colonists. The historian has not unnaturally as- sumed that the Americans, true to their professions, were engaged during this period in silent and successful enforcement of the boycott against dutied tea, or in other words, in the establishment of their hallowed principle of " no taxation without representa- tion." It is necessary to determine the validity of this assump- tion before it is possible to arrive at a correct understanding of the contest that arose between the colonists and the East India Company in the fall of 1773.
Only in two parts of British America did the people success- fully abstain from the importation and use of duty-laden tea during this period.4 These places were the chief centers for tea-smuggling in America, New York and Philadelphia. Un- embarrassed by the presence of the Board of Customs Com- missioners, as were their Boston brethren, the enterprising
' A paper read at the meeting of the American Historical Association in Cincinnati, December 27, I9I6.
2Donne, W. B., Correspondence of George III with Lord North (London, I867), I, 202.
3 The merchants of the leading cities acted as follows: New York, July 9; Phila. delphia, September 20; Baltimore, October 5; Boston, October 12; Charleston, December 13.
'Contemporaries realized this. Cf., e. g., " A Tradesman of Philadelphia " in the Pennsylvania Yournal, August 17, 1774, supplement.
6o
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UPRISING AGAINST THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 6I
merchants of these ports drove a brisk trade with Holland, Sweden and Germany, and with the Dutch island of St. Eusta- tius, for contraband tea, powder and other supplies, but partic- ularly for the forbidden tea.,
Lieutenant Governor Colden and Lord Dartmouth exchanged views on the subject, both agreeing in the sentiment that the illicit trade between New York and Holland prevailed " to an enormous degree." 2 "C It is well known," wrote Samuel Seabury in 1774, " that little or no tea has been entered at the Customs House for several years. All that is imported is smuggled from Holland, and the Dutch Islands in the West Indies."3 Gilbert Barkly, a Philadelphia merchant of sixteen years' standing, wrote in May 1773 of the extensive smuggling of tea "from Holland, France, Sweden, Lisbon &c. St. Eustatia, in the West Indies &c." 4 Smuggling " has amazingly encreased within these twenty years past," asserted "A Tradesman of Phila- delphia." 5 Hutchinson informed Lord Hillsborough that " in New York they import scarce any other than Dutch teas. In Rhode Island and Pennsylvania, it is little better." 6 Since smuggled tea was cheaper to the consumer than dutied tea and the profits of the tea-dealer were greater, the systematic neglect of the dutied article in New York and Philadelphia was as much in harmonywith self-interest as with love of principle, and gave fair occasion for the coining of the epigram that " a smuggler and a whig are cousin Germans . . ." 7
The smuggling merchants experienced little difficulty in getting their teas into America. There were all the secluded
'Letters of Thomas Hutchinson in Mass. Archives, xxvii, 3I7; Boston Gazette, Nov. 27, Dec. 4, 1775; and New England Chronicle, July 29, I775.
"N. Y. Col. Docs., VIII, 487, 5I0-5I2. 8 Free Tboughts on the Proceedings of the Continental Congress. . . By a Farmer
(I774). Cf. Becker, C., Political Parties in the Province of New York, I760-I776, p. 84, n. I58.
4Drake, F. S., Tea Leaves (Boston, I884), p. 20I.
5Pennsylvania _o7urnal, August I7, I774, supplement.
6Letter of Sept. I0, I77I; Boston Gazette, Nov. 27, 1775. Newport probably ranked next in importance to New York and Philadelphia as a center for tea-snmug- gling. Cf. Drake op. cit., pp. I94-I97.
7 " Massachusettensis " in Mass. Gazette and Boston Post-Boy, Jan. 2, I775.
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62 POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY [VOL. XXXII
landing-places which a much-indented coastline afforded, and all the tricks which the mind of a resourceful skipper could in- vent to deceive the customs officials., There were, furthermore, customs officials who, from lack of reward from the govern- ment, did not care to risk " the rage of the people," 2 or who, because of the forehandedness of the smugglers, found rich re- ward in conniving at the traffic. Colden cited the case of his grandson, recently appointed surveyor and searcher of the port of New York, who was given to understand by interested parties that " if he would not be officious in his Duty, he might depend upon receiving X6I 500 a year." 3
It is difficult, in these days of many tempting non-alcoholic beverages, to understand the hold-of the tea habit on the colo- nists. The views of some contemporary observers throw some light on the prevalence of tea drinking as well as the proportion of imported tea which failed to pay the parliamentary duty. Governor Hutchinson, who seems to have furnished the brains for the tea business carried on by his sons at Boston, esti- mated that the total annual consumption of tea in America was I9,200 chests or 6,528,ooo pounds.4 For approximately the same period, the amount of tea that paid the duty was about 320,000 pounds.5 Hutchinson's estimate was evidently wide of the mark, for even Samuel Wharton, who gravely averred that the frontiersmen and many Indians shared the popular habit of imbibing tea twice a day, placed the total consumption at a
E. g., filling the interstices of a lumber cargo with tea, carrying false bills of lading, and the like; private letters in Public Record Office: C. 0. 5, no. I38, pp. 151-152, I75 (Library of Congress Transcripts). Cf. the sailing orders of Captain Hammond for obtaining a tea cargo at G6teborg or Hamburg and for running it past the customs officials at Newport; Commerce of Rhode Island (7 M. H. S. Colls., IX), I, 332-333.
2 Letters of Hutchinson to Hillsborough, Aug. 25 and Sept. 10, 1771, in Bosten Gazette, Nov. 27, 1775.
3Colden Letter-Books (N. Y. Hist. Soc. Colls., 1876, 1877), II, 370-372.
'Letter of Sept. 10, 1771, in Boston Gazette, Nov. 27, 1775. 5The amount of dutied tea imported from Dec. I, 1770, to Jan. 5, 1772, was
344,771 pounds, according to an abstract prepared in the office of the inspector of imports and exports and quoted by Channing, E., History of the United States (New York, 1909-), III, 128 n.
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No. i] UPRISING AGAINST THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 63
million and a half pounds less., The London tea merchant, William Palmer, judged more dispassionately when he hazarded a figure about half that named by Hutchinson, remarking that Hutchinson's estimate of "1 I9,200 chests is more than has been hitherto annually imported from China by all foreign compa- nies."2 Assuming Palmer's conservative figure to be approx- imately correct, the conclusion would seem valid that in a year like I77I, marked by unusually large importations of dutied tea, nine-tenths of the tea consumed was illicitly imported.3
The incentive to smuggling existed in spite of the well-inten- tioned efforts of the British government. The Townshend Act of I 767, though imposing a small import duty of 3 d. a pound in America, had removed all British import duties from teas exported to America4 and had thus, for a time at least, reduced the cost of English tea to the American consumer below that of the contraband article. This advantageous situation of En- glish tea could in the nature of things continue only so long as the wholesale price of the tea in the English market did not go up, or the price of smuggled tea fall. The former occur- red. The East India Company, though not permitted to sell at retail, were permitted to name an upset price at their public auction sales. Treading the edge of a quicksand of bankruptcy and obliged by the Act of I767 to make good any deficiency in the revenues resulting from the discontinuance of certain tea duties, the company sought to recoup their losses by advancing the upset price of tea. Governor Hutchinson wrote to Lord Hillsborough on August 25, I77I: "If the India company had continued the sale of their teas at 2 s. 2 d. to 2 S. 4 d. as
they sold two years ago, the Dutch trade would have been over by this time; but now that the teas are at 3 s. the illicit traders
l Observations," Pa. Mag. Hist. and Biog., XXV, I40.
2 Drake, op. cit., p. I97.
3Hutchinson in I771 set the figure at nine-tenths for New York and Philadelphia and five-sixths for Massachusetts; Boston Gazette, Nov. 27, I775. But he said elsewhere that the contraband tea consumed at Boston came there by way of New York and Philadelphia; Mass. Archives, XXII, 3I7.
4 7 Geo. III, c. 56. See Professor Max Farrand's admirable article, " The Taxa- tion of Tea," Am. Hist. Rev., III, 266-269.
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64 POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY EVOL. XXXII
can afford to lose one chest in three... ." t Meantime, Dutch teas were selling in Holland at from i 8 d. to 2 s. per pound and paid no import duty into America.2 Hutchinson urged constantly in his business and political correspondence that " by some means or other the price of Teas in England to the Ex- porter ought to be kept nearer to the price in Holland."3
The next act of Parliament dealing with the East India Com- pany, enacted in June 1772, relieved the company from future liability for deficiency in the tea revenues but granted a draw- back of only three-fifths of the English import duties on tea exported to America instead of a complete reimbursement as formerly.4 This act failed to alter the situation materially, so far as the American dealer in dutied teas was concerned. The tea smuggler continued to control the situation, particularly at New York and Philadelphia; and in the period from December I, 1770, tO the termination of the customs service in i775, only 874 pounds of dutied tea were imported at New York, and 128 pounds at Philadelphia.5
The situation elsewhere was quite different. Not one men- tion was found in the newspapers of the remaining provinces of any effort to enforce the non-importation agreement,6 nor did the popular apathy provoke criticism or protest. Even the arch-radical, John Adams, could confide to his diary on Febru- ary 14, 1771, that he had "dined at Mr. Hancock's with the members, Warren, Church, Cooper, &c. and Mr. Harrison, and
IBoston Gazette, Nov. 27, 1775.
2Drake, op. cit., pp. I9I, 192,194-197. Hutchinson calculated the cost of land- ing smuggled tea at five per cent.
$Letters to William Palmer and Lord Hillsborough in Mass. Archives, XXVII, 206-207, and Boston Gazette, Nov. 27 and Dec. 4, 1775. Cf., memorial of Barkly, the Philadelphia merchant, to same purpose; Drake, ibid., pp. 199-202.
4Geo. III, c. 6o. The East India Company were obliged to pay the British gov- ernment more than / z 5,000 as a result of the falling-off of the tea revenues during the first four years under the act of 1767; Farrand, " Taxation of Tea," Am. Hist. Rev., III, 266-269.
5Channing, History of the United States, III, 128 n.
T The single recorded instance in any of the thirteen provinces was the case of John Turner, a New York shopkeeper, who, about six weeks after the New York agree- ment had been adopted, was detected in the act of selling some dutied tea; N. Y. Gazette and Mercury, Aug. 20, 1770.
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No. i] UPRISING AGAINST THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 65
spent the whole afternoon, and drank green tea, from Hol- land, I hope, but don't know."' On January 21, I772, the Boston radical, Thomas Cushing, declared that " to place any great dependence upon the virtue of the people in general, as to their refraining from the use of any of the duty articles, will be in vain.
When in the autumn months of I 773 public sentiment under- went an abrupt and radical change for reasons that will be discussed later, considerable light was thrown on the state of public mind that had existed prior to that time. Thus in August I774, Robert Findlay was adjudged by the Charles County, Md., Committee to have " fully and satisfactorily ex- culpated himself of any intention to counteract the resolutions of America" because he showed that his orders for dutied tea had been sent in the fall of 1773.3 Likewise, T. C. Williams and Company of Annapolis issued a statement in October I774, with reference to the tea consigned to them in the "Peggy Stewart," in which they declared:
When we ordered this tea [in May, I774], we did nothing more than our neighbours; for it is well known that most merchants, both here and in Baltimore, that ordered fall goods, ordered tea as usual; and to our certain knowledge, in the months of April, May and June last, near thirty chests were imported into this city by different merchants, and the duties paid without the least opposition. . . . We therefore think it hard, nay cruel usage, that our characters should be thus blasted for only doing what most people in this province that are con- cerned in trade, have likewise done.'
Newspaper references make it clear that the importation of dutied tea had been carried on during the years I77I-I773 at Charleston, S. C., with absolutely no attempt at concealment.5 At the public meeting held in December I773, upon the arrival of the East India Company's ship, it was strongly argued that
I John Adams' Works (C. F. Adams, ed., Boston, I856), II, 255.
2Letter to Roger Sherman; 4 M. H. S. Colls., IV, 358.
3Md. Gazete, Aug. II, 1774; also 4 Am. Archives, 1, 703-704. 4 Md. Gazelte,Oct. 27, 1774.
s S. C. Gazette, Nov. 29, Dec. 6, 20, 1773.
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66 POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY [VOL. XXXII
"Tea had ever been spontaneously imported and the Duty paid; that every subject had an equal right to send that article from the Mother Country into their Province, and therefore it was unreasonable to exclude the Hon. East India Company from the same privilege." I Indeed, while the people were still in session, some dutied teas on board the tea-ship, not owned by the East India Company, were landed and carted past the meeting-place to the stores of private merchants! 2
These contemporary views are abundantly supported by the official figures of the British government on the tea importations into the colonies.3 At Boston, a total of 373,077 pounds of dutied tea was imported from December I, 1770, to January 5, I 773, without articulate protest from the radicals.4 "Three hun- dred whole and fifty-five half Chests came in Vessels belonging to Mr. John Hancock the Patriot," stated the comptroller of customs at Boston in a letter of September 29, 1773, to John Pownall, under-secretary of state in the colonial department.5 In the other provinces of this group, the amount of dutied tea imported from December I, I770, to January5, I773, was less in quantity but probably about equal in proportion to their normal volume of trade. At Rhode Island the quantity of dutied tea entered was 20,833 pounds; at Patuxent, Maryland, 33,304 pounds; at the various Virginia ports, 79,527 pounds;
at Charleston, 48,540 pounds; and at Savannah, I2,93I pounds. The total for all provinces, always excepting New York and Pennsylvania, was 580,83I pounds, on which the duty was paid without arousing comment.
IN. Y. Gazetteer, Dec. 23, I773.
2Drayton, J., Memoirs of the American Revolution (Charleston, I82I), I, 98.
3Abstract prepared in the office of the inspector of imports and exports and quoted by Channing, op. cit., III, I28 n.
4"Q" in the Boston Evening Post, Nov. I5, r773, declared that I73 different merchants were concerned in this importation; but a letter from Boston in the Pa. Packet, Dec. I3, I773, claimed that the number of importers bad been confounded with the number of importations.
5 Letter of Benjamin Hallowell; Stevens, B. F., Facsimiles, XXIV, no. 2029, p. 5. A chest contained 340 pounds. John Adams admitted to Dickinson and others in I774 that a vessel, partially owned by Hancock, had, he supposed, carried dutied tea in the period after 1770; John Adams' Works, II, 38I.
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No. I] UPRISING AGAINST THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 67
II
The conclusion seems valid that, from the latter part of 1770 to about the middle of 1773, the sacrosanct principle of "no taxation without representation " received but a doubtful appli- cation in two provinces and was totally ignored throughout the most of British America. What, then, produced a revolution of sentiment in the leading commercial towns in the fall of 1773 and created a public opinion determined to oppose the intro- duction of dutied tea at almost any cost?
The chief animating cause was the passage of a new statute of Parliament, in May 1773, affecting the East India Company. This act involved no new infringement of the constitutional or natural rights of the Americans so far as taxation was concerned. Continuing the 3 d. import duty in America, it provided that a full drawback of English import duties should be given on all teas re-shipped to America, thus restoring the arrangement which had existed under the Townshend Act save for the indemnity clause. The radical innovation was introduced in the provision which empowered the East India Company, if they so chose, to export tea to America or to " foreign parts" from their warehouses and on their own account, upon obtaining a license from the commissioners of the treasury.' In other words, the East India Company, which hitherto had been required by law to sell their teas at public auction to merchants for exportation, were now authorized to become their own exporters and to establish branch houses in America. This arrangement swept away, by one stroke, the English merchant who purchased the tea at the company's auction and the American merchant who bought it of the English merchant; for the East India Com- pany, by dealing directly with the American retailer, eliminated all the profits which ordinarily accumulated in the passage of the tea through the hands of the middlemen. From another point of view, as Joseph Galloway has pointed out,
The consumer of tea in America was obliged to pay only one profit to the Company, another to the shopkeeper. But before the act, they
1 I3 Geo. III, c. 44. Such exportation was to be permitted only when the supply of tea in the company's warehouses amounted to at least xo,ooo,ooo pounds.
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68 POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY [VOL. XXXII
usually paid a profit to the Company, to the London merchant, who bought it of the Company and sold it to the American merchant, and also to the American merchant, besides the profit of the retailer. So that, by this act, the consumer of this necessary and common article of subsistence was enabled to purchase it at one-half of its usual price. . . .1
It is clear, thus, that the only new element introduced into the situation by the new act was the provision which made it pos- sible for the American consumer to buy dutied teas, imported directly by the East India Company, at a cheaper rate than dutied teas imported in the customary manner by private mer- chants or than Dutch teas introduced by the illicit traders. Therefore, when the colonial press announced in September I773 that the East India Company had been licensed to export more than half a million pounds of tea to the four leading ports of America, an alliance of powerful interests at once appeared in opposition to the company's shipments.
As Governor Hutchinson at Boston put it in a letter of Jan- uary 2, I 774:
Our liberty men had lost their reputation with Philadelphia and New York, having been importers of Teas from England for three or four Years past notwithstanding the engagement they had entrd into to the contrary. As soon as the news came of the intended exportation of Teas [by the] E. I. Company which must of course put an end to all Trade in Teas by private Merchants, proposals were made both to Philadelphia and York for a new Union, and they were readily accepted, for although no Teas had been imported from England at either of those places, yet an immense profit had been made by the Importation from Holland, which wou'd entirely cease if the Teas from the E. I. Company should be admitted. This was the consideration which en- gaged all the merchants.2
'Galloway, Historical and Political Reflections on the Rise and Progress of the American Rebellion (London, 1780), 17-I8. For similar statements, cf. "Z" in Boston Eve. Post, Oct. 25, 1773, and " Massachusettensis " in Mass. Gazette and Bos. Post-Boy, Jan. 2, 1775.
2Mass. Archives, XXVII, 6io. Such also was the view of the anonymous author of The History of the Origin, Rise and Progress of the War in America (reprinted at Boston, 1780), 74: "All the dealers, both legal and clandestine, . . . saw their trade taken at once out of their hands. They supposed it would fall into the hands
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No. i] UPRISING AGAINST THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 69
An extended controversy began in newspaper and broadside, which not only revealed the fundamental antagonism between the undertaking of the British trading corporation and the in- terest of the colonial tea merchants, but also pointed out the far-reaching menace which the new act held for American mer- chants in general. To broaden the basis of the popular protest, the old theoretical arguments against the taxing authority of Parliament were exhumed; and new and bizarre arguments were invented.
An examination of the propagandist literature and of a few private letters will bear out this preliminary analysis. Most of the writings against the tea shipments issued from the print- shops of Boston, New York and Philadelphia and, with varying emphasis, covered substantially the same ground. The Charle- ston newspapers reprinted many of the northern arguments, and the events there may therefore be said to have been de- termined in large part by the same sentiments.
At Boston, the newspaper writers laid great stress on the fact that the legitimate traffic in English teas was assailed with de- structive competition. " A Consistent Patriot" declared that the new statute would displace the men in the American tea trade and force them to seek their living elsewhere " in order to make room for an East India factor, probably from North- Britain, to thrive upon what are now the honest gains of our own Merchants." " Surely all the London Merchants trading to America and all the American Merchants trading with Britain," said " Reclusus," " must highly resent such a Monopoly, con- sidered only as it effects their private Interest" and without regard to the fact that everyone who buys the tea will be pay- ing tribute to the " harpy Commissioners" and to Parliament; the newly-appointed tea consignees "can't seriously imagine that the Merchants will quietly see themselves excluded from a considerable branch of Trade . . . that they and the odious
of the company's consignees, to whom they must become in a great measure depend- ent, if they could hope to trade at all.'' Cf. also Ramsay, History of the Amer- ican Revolution (Philadelphia, 1789), I, 96.
Mass. Spy, Oct. 14, 1773.
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70 POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY [VOL. XXXII
Commissioners may riot in luxury." ' " A Merchant " ex- pressed surprise that the merchants and traders had not met to take action in the crisis, noting, among other commercial ills, that " those gentlemen that have dealt in that article will alto- gether be deprived of the benefit arising from such business. "2 The loyalist town of Hinsdale, N. H., resolved unanimously that the tumult against the tea was not due to objections against a revenue tax, " but because the intended Method of Sale in this Country by the East India Company probably would hurt the private Interest of many Persons who deal largely in Tea."3
At New York and Philadelphia, the chief smuggling ports, greater emphasis was placed on the threatened ruin awaiting the illicit tea traffic. The Philadelphia merchant, Thomas Wharton, pointed out that " it is impossible always to form a true judgment from what real motives an opposition springs, as the smugglers and London importers may both declare that this duty is stamping the Americans with the badge of slav- ery."4 A tea commissioner at Boston believed that the agita- tion against the act was "fomented, if not originated, prin- cipally by those persons concerned in the Holland trade," a trade " much more practised in the Southern Governments than this way." 5 " A Citizen " conceded cautiously in the New York Yourrnal of November II, 1773, that "we have not been hitherto altogether at the mercy of those monopolists [the East India Company], because it has been worth the while for others to supply us with tea at a more reasonable price," but that here- after "if tea should be brought us from any foreign market, the East India Company might occasionally undersell those concerned in it, so as to ruin or deter them from making many experiments of the kind." A loyalist writer expressed the same thought from a different point of view when he affirmed to the people of New York that every measure of the radical cabal
I Boston Eve. Post, Oct. I8, 1773. 'Mass. Spy, OCt. 28, 1773.
Nat. H. Gazette, June 17, 1774. 4Drake, op. cit., p. 273. s'Ibid., pp. 261-262.
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No. i] UPRISING AGAINST THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 7I
is an undoubted proof that not your liberties but their private interest is the object. To create an odium against the British company is the main point at which they have labored. They have too richly exper- ienced the fruits which may be reaped from a contraband trade. to relinquish them to others without a struggle.'
One of the tea commissioners at New York declared that "the introduction of the East India Company's tea is violently opposed here by a set of men who shamefully live by monopo- lizing tea in the smuggling way." 2 Governor Tryon and others entertained a similar opinion.3
To rob the new law of the appeal it held for the pocketbooks of the tea purchasers, the writers impeached the good faith of the company in undercutting prices. " Reclusus" predicted confidently that " tho' the first Teas may be sold at a low Rate to make a popular Entry, yet when this mode of receiving Tea is well established, they, as all other Monopolists do, will medi- tate a greater profit on their Goods, and set them up at what Price they please." 4 " Hampden" wrote:
Nor let it be said, to cajole the poor, that this importation of tea will lower the price of it. Is any temporary abatement of that to be weighed in the balance with the permanent loss that will attend the sole monop- oly of it in future, which will enable them abundantly to reimburse themselves by raising the price as high as their known avarice may dictate? I
In the words of " Mucius,"
Every purchaser must be at their mercy; ... the India Company would not undertake to pay the duty in England or America-pay enormous fees to Commissioners, &c. &c. unless they were well assured that the Amerzcans would in the end reimburse them for every expense their unreasonable project should bring along with it.6
1IN. Y. Gazetteer, Nov. I8, 1773. 2 Drake, o,. cit., p. 269.
3 N. Y. Col. Docs., VIII, 400, 408. A similar opinion was shared by Haldimand, at New York, Brit. Papers ('I Sparks Mss."), III, I75; and by the anonymous authors of letters in 4 Am. Arch., I, 302 n., and of an address in ibid., 642.
'Boston Eve. Post, Oct. I8, 1773.
5X. Y. 7ournal, Oct. 28, I773.
6Pa. Packet, Nov. I, 1773.
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72 POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY [VOL. XXXII
The writers sought to show that the present project of the East India Company was the entering wedge for larger and more ambitious undertakings calculated to undermine the col- onial mercantile world. Their opinion was based on the fact that, in addition to the article of tea, the East India Company imported into England vast quantities of silks, calicoes and other fabrics, spices, drugs and chinaware, all commodities of staple demand; and on their fear that the success of the present ven- ture would result in an extension of the same principle to the sale of the other articles. Perhaps no argument had greater weight than this; nor, indeed, was such a development beyond the range of possibility. X
If they succeed in their present experiment with tea, argued "A Mechanic,"
they will send their own Factors and Creatures, establish Houses among US, Ship US all other East-India Goods; and, in order to full freight their Ships, take in other Kind of Goods at under Freight, or [more probably ship] them on their own Accounts to their own Factors, and undersell our Merchants, till they monopolize the whole Trade. Thus our Merchants are ruined, Ship Building ceases. They will then sell Goods at any exorbitant Price. Our Artificers will be unemployed, and every Tradesman will groan under dire Oppression.2
"H Hampden " warned the New Yorkers:
If you receive the portion [of tea] designed for this city, you will in future have an India warehouse here; and the trade of all the com-
I In a letter of Oct. 5, I773 to Thomas Walpole, Thomas Wharton proposed the extension of the East India Company's trade, under the new regulations, to include pepper, spices and silks; Drake, op. Ci/., pp. 274-275. Dickinson, in an essay in July 1774, quoted a contemporary writer in England as proposing " that the Gov. ernment, through the means of a few merchants acquainted with the American trade,
. . should establish factors at Boston, New York, and a few other ports, for the sale of such cargoes of British manufactures as should be consigned to them; and to consist of such particularly as were most manufactured in the Province, with direc. tions immediately and continually to undersell all such Colony manufactures; " 4 Am. Archives, I, 575 n. The probability of some such scheme was also contem. plated by " An American Watchman " in Pinkney's Va. Gazette, Jan. 26, 1775.
2Pa. Gazette, Dec. 8, 1773. Cf. also a letter in Pa. Chron., Nov. 15, 1773, and "A Countryman " in Pa. Packet, Oct. i8, 1773.
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No. i] UPRISING AGAINST THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 73
modities of that country will be lost to your merchants and be carried on by the company, which will be an immense loss to the colony.'
A customs commissioner writing to the home government from Boston noted that it was pretended that " when once the East India Company has established Warehouses for the Sale of Tea, all other articles commonly imported from the East Indies and Saleable in America, will be sent there by the Company." 2
That the fear of monopoly was the mainspring of American opposition is further evidenced by the trend of discussion in the early weeks before it was known definitely that the new law provided for the retention of the three-pence import duty. The report gained currency that the tea shipped by the East India Company was to be introduced free of the American import duty. This understanding was based upon a misreading of that portion of the statute which empowered the company " to ex- port such tea to any of the British colonies or plantations in America, or to foreign parts, discharged from the payment of any customs or duties whatsoever, anything in the said recited act, or any other act, to the contrary notwithstanding." 3 Had this been a correct interpretation of the law, there is every reason to believe that the course of American opposition would have developed unchanged and the tea would then have been dumped into the Atlantic as an undisguised and unmixed pro- test against a grasping trading-monopoly.
Governor Tryon, of New York, in a letter to the home gov- ernment made reference to the animated discussion over the question; and added:
If the tea comes free of every duty, I understand it is then to be con- sidered as a Monopoly of the East India Company in America; a monopoly of dangerous tendency, it is said, to American liberties.... So that let the Tea appear free or not free of Duty those who carry on
1N. Y. Yournal, Oct. 28, I773. 2 Stevens, Facsimiles, XXIV, no. 2029, p. 4. Cf. also Hancock's view, expressed
in the annual oration of Mar. 5, I774; I M. H. S. Procs., XIII, I87.
3Unsigned article in N. F. Gazetteer, Oct. 28, I773. Cf. "Poplicola," ibid., Nov. I8, I773. "A construction strongly implied by the liberty granted to export the same Commodity to foreign Countries free of Duties," wrote Tryon to Dartmouth, Nov. 3, I773; N. Y. Col. Docs. VIII, 400-40I.
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74 POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY [VOL. XXXII
the illicit Trade will raise objections, if possible, to its being brought on shore and sold.1
Tryon's analysis of the situation is confirmed by the tone of newspaper discussion during the weeks of uncertainty.
Even if the tea bears no duty, wrote a New Yorker to his friend in Philadelphia, "t would not the opening of an East-India House in America encourage all the great Companies in Great Britain to do the same? If so, have we a single chance of being any Thing but Hewers of Wood and Drawers of Waters to them? The East Indians are a proof of this."2 In like spirit, "A Mechanic" declared scornfully that it made no dif- ference whether the tea was dutied or not. "1 Is it not a gross and daring insult, to pilfer the trade from the Americans, and lodge it in the hands of the East India Company?" he queried; " it will first most sensibly affect the Merchants; but it will also very materially affect . . . every Member of the Com- munity." 3
In the vigorous words of "A Citizen," " Whether the duty on tea is taken off or not, the East India Company's scheme has too dangerous an aspect for us to permit an experiment to be made of it." In the same letter he says:
The scheme appears too big with mischievous consequences and dangers to America, [even if we consider it only] as it may create a monopoly; or, as it may introduce a monster, too powerful for us to control, or con- tend with, and too rapacious and destructive, to be trusted, or even seen without horror, that may be able to devour every branch of our com- merce, drain us of all our property and substance, and wantonly leave us to perish by thousands.
All ambiguity as to the true meaning of the statute was re- moved by the lucid pen of John Dickinson and others and finally by a reported opinion of His Majesty's attorney and solicitor general. It was shown, by careful analysis of the act,
1N. Y. Col. Docs., VIII, 400. 2Pa. Chron., Nov. 15, 1773.
3 Pa. Gazette, Dec. 8, 1773. 4 A. Y. 7ournal, Nov. 4, 1773.
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No. i] UPRISING AGAINST THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 75
that the East India Company were merely exempted from the payment of all duties and customs chargeable in England and that the American import duty remained as before.' Even after this time, the New Yorkers were afraid that Parliament might heed the American protest against taxation and proceed to repeal the three-pence duty without rescinding the monopoly rights granted to the East India Company. In a remarkable letter written more than two months after the Boston Tea Party, the New York Committee of Correspondence asserted frankly:
Should the Revenue Act be repealed this Session of Parliament, as the East India Company by the Act passed the last Session have liberty to export their own Tea, which is an advantage they never had before and which their distress will certainly induce them to embrace, we consider such an event as dangerous to our Commerce, as the execu- tion of the Revenue Act would be to our Liberties. For as no Mer- chant who is acquainted with the certain opperation of a Monopoly on that or this side the Water will send out or order Tea to America when those who have it at the first hand send to the same market, the Com- pany will have the whole supply in their Hands. Hence it will neces- sarily follow that we shall ultimately be at their Mercy to extort from us what price they please for their Tea. And when they find their success in this Article, they will obtain liberty to export their Spices, Silk etc. . . . And therefore we have had it long in contemplation to endeavor to get an Agreement signed not to purchase any English tea till so much of the Act passed the last session of Parliament enabling the Company to ship their Tea to America be repealed. Nothing short of this will prevent its being sent out on their account.2
" y. Z." (Dickinson) in Pa. 7ournal, Nov. 3, 1773; also in Dickinson's Writ- ings (Ford, P. L., ed.), I, 457-458; "Cato" and "A Tradesman" in N. Y. Gazet'eer, Nov. 4, I8, 1773; "A Citizen " in N. Y. %urnal, Nov. 4, 1773; letter in Pa. 7ourna/, Nov. 10, 1773.
2 Letter to Boston Committee of Correspondence, Feb. 28, 1773; Bos. Com. Cor- Mss., IX, 742-746. The letter added that the committee would " feel the pulse" of the Philadelphia Committee and the other committees to the southward and re- quested the Boston Committee to urge the matter on the committees at Rhode Island, Philadelphia and Charleston, S. C. No replies to the New York proposal have been found.
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76 POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY [VOL. XXXII
III
In view of the subordinate place which the argument of vio- lated rights held in the minds of the propagandists, protests against "taxation without representation" were made chiefly for rhetorical effect., This may be shown by a few examples. In a letter written by a committee of the Massachusetts As- sembly after the Boston Tea Party, the new act was characterized as " introductive of monopolies which, besides the train of evils that attend them in a commercial view, are forever dangerous to public liberty," also as " pregnant with new grievances, pav- ing the way to further impositions, and in its consequences threatening the final destruction of liberties." 2 "1 A Consistent Patriot " stigmatized the act as " a plan not only destructive to trade, in which we are all so deeply interested but . . . de- signed to promote and encrease a revenue extorted from us against our consent." 3 The new statute, declares " Causidi- cus," was a case of
taxation without consent and monopoly of trade establishing itself to- gether . . . . Let the trade be monopolized in particular hands or companies, and the privileges of these companies lye totally at the mercy of a British ministry and how soon will that ministry command all the power and property of the empire?'
Even the members of the First Continental Congress treated the matter from an unchanged viewpoint when they declared, on October 21, 1774, in their Memorial to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies that "'Administration . . . entered into a monopolizing combination with the East India Company, to
'The smugglers and dissatisfied merchants " made a notable stalking horse of the word liberty," declared " A Tradesman of Philadelphia," " and many well meaning persons were duped by the specious colouring of their sinister zeal." Pa. 97ournal, Aug. 17, 1774, suppl.
2Letter of Dec. 21, 1773, to Arthur Lee, signed by Thomas Cushing, Samuel Adams, John Hancock and William Phillips; 4 M. H. S. Colls., IV, 377.
'Mass. Sty, Oct. 14, 1773.
JIbid., Nov. 4, 1773. Cf. also "Joshua, the son of Nun," ibid., Oct. 14, 1773, and " Scaevola " in Pa. Chron., Oct. II, 1773.
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No. i] UPRISING AGAINST THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 77
send to this Continent vast quantities of Tea, an article on which a Duty was laid. . . ."
Of the other arguments used to stir up opposition, the most interesting was the attempt to discredit the present undertaking of the East India Company by reason of the company's notori- ously bad record in India. John Dickinson was the most forceful exponent of this view in a broadside which had wide popularity in both Philadelphia and New York. Writing under the signa- ture of " Rusticus," he declared:
Their conduct in Asia, for some Years past, has given ample Proof, how little they regard the Laws of Nations, the Rights, Liberties, or Lives of Men. They have levied War, excited Rebellions, dethroned Princes, and sacrificed Millions for the Sake of Gain. The revenues of mighty Kingdoms have centered in their Coffers. And these not being suf- ficient to glut their Avarice, they have, by the most unparalleled Bar- barities, Extortions and Monopolies, stripped the miserable Inhabitants of their Property, and reduced whole Provinces to Indigence and Ruin. Fifteen hundred Thousand, it is said, perished by Famine in one Year, not because the Earth denied its Fruits, but this Company and its Servants engrossed all the Necessaries of Life, and set them at so high a Rate, that the Poor could not purchase them. Thus having drained the Sources of that immense Wealth . . . , they now, it seems, cast their Eyes on America, as a new Theatre, whereon to exercise their Talents of Rapine, Oppression and Cruelty. The Monopoly of Tea, is, I dare say, but a small Part of the Plan they have formed to strip us of our Property. But thank God, we are not Sea Poys, nor Ma- rattas, but Brtish Subjrcts, who are born to Liberty, who know its Worth, and who prize it high.2
I Joumals of the Continental Congress (L. C. edn.), I, g8.
2Dickinson's Writings, I, 459-463. According to "A Mechanic," "The East- India Ccmpany, if once they get Footing, . . . will leave no Stone unturned to become your Masters. . . They themselves are well versed in Tyranny, Plunder, Oppression and Bloodshed " and so on; Pa. Gazette, Dec. 8, I773. A town meet- ing at Windham, Conn., on June 23, 1774, denounced the East India Company, declaring: " Let the Spanish barbarities in Mexico and the name of a Cortez be sunk in everlasting oblivion, while such more recent, superior cruelties bear away the palm, in the history of their rapine and cruelty;" Mass. Spy, July 7, I774. Cf. also " A. Z." in Pa. Yournal, Oct. 20, 1773, and " Hampden " in N. Y. Yournal, Oct. 28, 1773.
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78 POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY [VOL. XXXII
The hygienic objection to tea drinking also received attention. It is not altogether without significance that one of the leading men to urge this objection was Dr. Thomas Young, a physician who spent more time in the Boston Committee of Correspond- ence meditating a rigorous physic for the body politic than in prescribing for private patients., Dr. Young cited Dr. Tissot, professor of physic at Berne, and other eminent authorities, to prove that the introduction of tea into Europe had caused the whole face of disease to change, the prevailing disorders now being " spasms, vapors, hypochondrias, apoplexies of the ser- ous kind, palsies, dropsies, rheumatisms, consumptions, low nervous, miliary and petechial fevers." 2 " Philo-Alethias" added "the great Boerhaave" and Dr. Cullen, professor of medicine at Edinburgh, to the authorities already noted, and suggested seventeen possible substitutes, beneficial in their effects, that could be brewed from plants of American growth.3 ",An old Mechanic" recalled with a sigh
the time when Tea was not used, nor scarcely known amongst us, and yet people seemed at that time of day to be happier, and to enjoy more health in general than they do now. [Since those days, a sad change has occurred] we must be every day bringing in some new- fangled thing or other from abroad, till we are really become a luxuri- ous people. No matter how ugly and deformed a garment is; nor how insipid or tasteless, or prejudicial to our healths an eatable or drinkable is, we must have it, if it is the fashion.'
" A Woman's" intuition suggested the fitting retort to these alarmist writings when she remarked scornfully that no one had heard of these " scarecrow stories" until tea had become a political issue.5 The little town of Hinsdale, N. H., undertook to expose the hypocrisy of the health advocates in a different
I Edes, H. H., "Dr. Thomas Young," Col. Soc. Mass. Pubs., XI, 2-54.
2Bos. Eve. Post, Oct. 25, 1773. Cf. also his article in the Mass. Spy, Dec. 30,
1773. 3Pa. 7ournal, Dec. 22, 1773. 4Ibid., OCt. 20, 1773.
5Mass. Spy, Dec. 23, 1773.
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No. I] UPRISING AGAINST THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 79
way. Assembled in town meeting, the inhabitants resolved unanimously that " the Consequences attending the use of New- England Rum are much more pernicious to Society than the Consequences attending the use of Tea," destroying " the Lives and Liberties of Thousands where Tea hath or ever will One," and that Hinsdale would banish the use of tea when those towns and persons who declaimed so loudly against tea should abstain from the use of rum.'
These were the views and arguments that incited the people to action when the shipments of the East India Company ar- rived. The basis for the later claim that the colonists were animated by devotion to the principle of local taxation was to be found in the declarations issued by mass meetings convened to coerce the tea commissioners into resigning. The resolutions adopted by the Philadelphia meeting of October i6, formed a model for many other similar gatherings: the tea duty was denounced as taxation without representation and the shipment of tea by the East India Company was denominated an open attempt to enforce the ministerial plan.2 These meetings, however, were the flowering, not the roots, of the tree that had been carefully planted and nourished by the beneficiaries of the existing business order.
ARTHUR MEIER SCHLESINGER. OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY.
1N. H. Gaselle, June 17, 1774. 2 Pa. Packet, Oct. I8, 1773.
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- Article Contents
- p. 60
- p. 61
- p. 62
- p. 63
- p. 64
- p. 65
- p. 66
- p. 67
- p. 68
- p. 69
- p. 70
- p. 71
- p. 72
- p. 73
- p. 74
- p. 75
- p. 76
- p. 77
- p. 78
- p. 79
- Issue Table of Contents
- Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 1 (Mar., 1917), pp. i-viii+1-176
- Volume Information [pp. i-viii]
- Front Matter [p. ii-ii]
- The British Labor Movement and the War [pp. 1-27]
- The Secret Sittings of the House of Commons [pp. 28-35]
- Balkan Diplomacy. I [pp. 36-59]
- The Uprising Against the East India Company [pp. 60-79]
- The Unearned Increment in Gary [pp. 80-94]
- Wieser's Theory of Social Economics [pp. 95-118]
- John Hay [pp. 119-125]
- Reviews
- Review: untitled [pp. 126-130]
- Review: untitled [pp. 131-133]
- Review: untitled [pp. 133-134]
- Review: untitled [pp. 135-136]
- Review: untitled [pp. 137-139]
- Review: untitled [pp. 139-142]
- Review: untitled [pp. 143-145]
- Review: untitled [pp. 146-148]
- Review: untitled [pp. 148-150]
- Review: untitled [pp. 150-152]
- Review: untitled [pp. 153-155]
- Review: untitled [pp. 155-158]
- Review: untitled [pp. 158-161]
- Review: untitled [pp. 161-162]
- Review: untitled [pp. 162-163]
- Review: untitled [p. 164]
- Review: untitled [p. 165]
- Review: Book Notes [pp. 166-176]