tea for which there was no demand. Lord North and
his colleagues were not willing to lose the expected revenue, as small
as it must be at last from their American Tea Act, and the East India
Company were unwilling to lose the profits of their American tea trade.

An agreement was therefore entered into between the Ministry and the
Company, by which the Company, which was authorized by law to export
their tea free of duty to all places whatsoever, could send their tea
cheaper to the colonies than others who had to pay the exceptionable
duty, and even cheaper than before it had been made a source of
revenue; "for the duty taken off it when exported from Great Britain was
greater than that to be paid for it on its importation into the
colonies. Confident of success in finding a market for their tea, thus
reduced in its price, and also of collecting a duty on its importation
and sale in the colonies, the East India Company freighted several ships
with teas for the different colonies, and appointed agents (or
consignees) for its disposal." This measure united both the English and
American merchants in opposition to it upon selfish grounds of interest,
and the colonists generally upon patriotic grounds. "The merchants in
England were alarmed at the losses that must come to themselves from the
exportations of the East India Company, and from the sales going through
the hands of consignees. Letters were written to colonial patriots,
urging their opposition to the project. The (American merchants)
smugglers, who were both numerous and powerful, could not relish a
scheme which, by underselling them and taking a profitable branch of
business out of their hands, threatened a diminution of their gains. The
colonists were too suspicious of the designs of Great Britain to be
imposed upon.

"The cry of endangered liberty once more excited an alarm from New
Hampshire to Georgia. The first opposition to the execution of the
scheme adopted by the East India Company began with the American
merchants. They saw a profitable branch of their trade likely to be
lost, and the benefits of it transferred to a company in Great Britain.
They felt for the wound that would be inflicted on their country's claim
of exemption from parliamentary taxation; but they felt, with equal
sensibility, for the losses they would sustain by the diversion of the
streams of commerce into unusual channels. Though the opposition
originated in the selfishness of the me