imposed upon them; but the sentiment of the principal commercial towns
was against the importation of any tea from England. An association was
formed not to drink tea until the Act imposing the duty should be
repealed. This was generally agreed to and observed throughout the
colonies.

But the retaining of threepence in the pound on tea did not excite so
much hostility in the colonies against the Parliament as might have been
expected. The Act of Parliament was virtually defeated, and the expected
revenue from tea failed because of the resolution of the colonial
associations of the people to use no tea, and of the merchants to
import none on which the duty was charged. The merchants found means to
smuggle, from countries to which the authority of Great Britain did not
extend, a sufficient supply of tea for the tea-drinking colonists. Thus
the tea-dealers and tea-drinkers of America exercised their patriotism
and indulged their taste--the one class making an additional threepence
a pound on tea by evading the Act, and the other class enjoying the
luxury of tea as cheap as if no tea-duty Act of Parliament existed, and
with the additional relish of rendering such Act abortive. The
facilities for smuggling tea, arising from the great extent of the
American coasts, and the great number of harbours, and the universality
of the British anti-tea associations, and the unity of popular sentiment
on the subject, rendered the Act of Parliament imposing the duty a
matter of sport rather than a measure of oppression even to the most
scrupulous, as they regarded the Act unconstitutional, and every means
lawful and right by which the obnoxious Act could be evaded and
defeated. It is probable that, in the ordinary course of things, the Act
would have become practically obsolete, and the relations of the
colonies to the mother country have settled down into quietness and
friendliness, but for another event, which not only revived with
increased intensity the original question of dispute, but gave rise to
other occurrences that kindled the flame of the American revolution.
That event was the agreement between the Ministry and the East India
Company, which interfered with the natural and ordinary channels of
trade, and gave to that Company a monopoly of the tea trade of America.
From the diminished exportation of tea from England to the colonies,
there were, in warehouses of the British East India Company, seventeen
millions of pounds of