e able to buy tea from the Company at a lower price than from any
other European nation, and that men will always go to the cheapest
market.

"The Ministry was still in its halcyon days; no opposition was made even
by the Whigs; and the measure, which was the King's own, and was
designed to put America to the test, took effect as law from the 10th
day of May, 1773. It was immediately followed by a most carefully
prepared answer from the King to petitions from Massachusetts,
announcing that he 'considered his authority to make laws in Parliament
of sufficient force and validity to bind his subjects in America, in all
cases whatsoever, as essential to the dignity of the Crown, and a right
appertaining to the State, which it was his duty to preserve entire and
inviolate;' that he therefore 'could not but be greatly displeased with
the petitions and remonstrance in which that right was drawn into
question,' but that he 'imputed the unwarrantable doctrines held forth
in the said petitions and remonstrance to the artifices of a few.' All
this while Lord Dartmouth (the new Secretary of State for the Colonies,
successor to Lord Hillsborough) 'had a true desire to see lenient
measures adopted towards the colonies,' not being in the least aware
that he was drifting with the Cabinet towards the very system of
coercion against which he gave the most public and the most explicit
pledges." (History of the United States, Vol. VI., pp. 458-460.)]

[Footnote 323: See these resolutions, in a note on pp. 374, 375.]

[Footnote 324: "In South Carolina, some of the tea was thrown into the
river as at Boston." (English Annual Register for 1774, Vol. XVII., p.
50.)]

CHAPTER XVIII.

EVENTS OF 1774--ALL CLASSES IN THE COLONIES DISCONTENTED--ALL CLASSES
AND ALL THE PROVINCES REJECT THE EAST INDIA COMPANY'S TEA.

The year 1774 commenced, among other legacies of 1773, with that of the
discontent of all the colonies,[325] their unanimous rejection of the
East India tea, stamped with the threepenny duty of parliamentary tax,
as the symbol of the absolutism of King and Parliament over the
colonies. The manner of its rejection, by being thrown into the sea at
Boston, was universally denounced by all parties in England. The
accounts of all the proceedings in America against the admission of the
East India tea to the colonial ports, were coloured by the mediums
through which they were transmitted--the royal governors and their
executive o