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| Long title | An act to allow a drawback of the duties of customs on the exportation of tea or oil to any of his Majesty's colonies or plantations or farms in America; to increase the deposit on bohea tea to be sold at the East India Company's sales, and to empower the commissioners of the treasury to grant licenses to the East India Company to export tea duty-free. |
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| Citation | 13 Geo. 3. c. 44 |
| Introduced by | The Rt. Hon. Lord North, KG, MP Prime Minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer & Leader of the House of Commons |
| Territorial extent | |
| Dates | |
| Royal assent | 10 May 1773 |
| Commencement | 10 May 1773 |
| Repealed | 1861 |
| Other legislation | |
| Repealed by | Statute Law Revision Act 1861 |
| Relates to | |
Status: Repealed | |
| Text of statute as originally enacted | |
| Part of a series on the |
| American Revolution |
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The Tea Act 1773 (13 Geo. 3. c. 44) was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain. The principal objective was to reduce the massive amount of tea held by the financially troubled British East India Company in its London warehouses and to help the struggling company survive.[1] A related objective was to undercut the price of illegal tea, smuggled into Britain's North American colonies. This was supposed to convince the colonists to purchase Company tea on which the Townshend duties were paid, thus implicitly agreeing to accept Parliament's right of taxation. Smuggled tea was a large issue for Britain and the East India Company, since approximately 86% of all the tea in America at the time was smuggled Dutch tea.
The Act granted the Company the right to directly ship its tea to North America and the right to the duty-free export of tea from Britain, although the tax imposed by the Townshend Acts and collected in the colonies remained in force. It received the royal assent on May 10, 1773.
Colonists in the Thirteen Colonies recognized the implications of the Act's provisions, and a coalition of merchants, smugglers, and artisans similar to that which had opposed the Stamp Act 1765 mobilized opposition to the delivery and distribution of the tea. The company's authorised consignees were harassed, and in many colonies, successful efforts were made to prevent the tea from being landed. In Boston, this resistance culminated in the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773, when colonists (some disguised as Native Americans) boarded tea ships anchored in the harbour and dumped their tea cargo overboard. Parliamentary reaction to this event included the passage of the Coercive Acts, designed to punish Massachusetts for its resistance, and the appointment of General Thomas Gage as royal governor of Massachusetts. These actions further raised tensions that led to the eruption of the American War of Independence in April 1775.
Parliament passed the Taxation of Colonies Act 1778, which repealed a number of taxes (including the tea tax that underlay this act) as one of a number of conciliatory proposals presented to the Second Continental Congress by the Carlisle Peace Commission. The commission's proposals were rejected. The Act effectively became a "dead letter", but was not formally removed from the books until the passage of the Statute Law Revision Act 1861.
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Transcription
You've probably heard of the Boston Tea Party, something about a bunch of angry colonists dressed as Native Americans throwing chests of tea into the water. But the story is far more complicated, filled with imperial intrigue, corporate crisis, smuggling, and the grassroots origins of the American Revolution. The first thing you need to know about tea in the 1700's is that it was really, really popular. In England, each man, woman, and child consumed almost 300 cups of this stuff every year. And, since the English colonized America, Americans were crazy about tea too. By the 1760's, they were drinking over a million pounds of tea every year. So, when Britain wanted to increase taxes on tea in America, people were not happy, mostly because they had no say in tax decisions made in London. Remember that famous phrase, "No taxation without representation"? The American colonists had long believed that they were not subject to taxes imposed by legislature in which they lacked representation. In fact, rather than paying the taxes, they simply dodged the tax collectors. Since the east coast of America is hundreds of miles long and British enforcement was lax, about 3/4 of the tea Americans were drinking was smuggled in, usually from Holland. But the British insisted that Parliament did have the authority to tax the colonists, especially after Britain went deeply into debt fighting the French in the Seven Years' War. To close the budget gap, London looked to Americans, and in 1767 imposed new taxes on a variety of imports, including the American's beloved tea. America's response: no thanks! They boycotted the importation of tea from Britain, and instead, brewed their own. After a new bunch of British customs commissioners cried to London for troops to help with tax enforcement, things got so heated that the Red Coats fired on a mob in Boston, killing several people, in what was soon called the Boston Massacre. Out of the terms of the 1773 Tea Act, Parliament cooked up a new strategy. Now the East India Company would sell the surplus tea directly through hand-picked consignees in America. This would lower the price to consumers, making British tea competitive with the smuggled variety while retaining some of the taxes. But the colonists saw through the British ploy and cried, "Monopoly!" Now it's a cold and rainy December 16, 1773. About 5,000 Bostonians are crowded into the Old South Meeting House, waiting to hear whether new shipments of tea that have arrived down the harbor will be unloaded for sale. When the captain of one of those ships reported that he could not leave with his cargo on board, Sam Adams rose to shout, "This meeting can do no more to save the country!" Cries of "Boston Harbor a teapot tonight!" rang out from the crowd, and about 50 men, some apparently dressed as Native Americans, marched down to Griffin's Wharf, stormed aboard three ships, and threw 340 tea chests overboard. An infuriated British government responsded with the so-called Coercive Acts of 1774, which, among other things, closed the port of Boston until the locals compensated the East India Company for the tea. That never happened. Representatives of the colonies gathered at Philadelphia to consider how best to respond to continued British oppression. This first Continental Congress supported destruction of the tea, pledged to support a continued boycott, and went home in late October 1774 even more united in their determination to protect their rights and liberties. The Boston Tea Party began a chain reaction that led with little pause to the Declaration of Independence and a bloody rebellion, after which the new nation was free to drink its tea, more or less, in peace.
Background
In the 1760s and earlier the East India Company had been required to sell its tea exclusively in London on which it paid a duty which averaged two shillings and six pence per pound.[2] Tea destined for the North American colonies would be purchased by merchants specializing in that trade, who transported it to North America for eventual retail sale. The markups imposed by these merchants, combined with the tea tax imposed by the Townshend Acts of 1767 created a profitable opportunity for American merchants to import and distribute tea purchased from the Dutch in transactions and shipments that violated the Navigation Acts and were treated by British authorities as smuggling. Smugglers imported some 900,000 pounds (410,000 kg) of cheap foreign tea per year. The quality of the smuggled tea did not match the quality of the dutiable East India Company tea, of which the Americans bought 562,000 pounds (255,000 kg) per year.[3] Although the British tea was more appealing in flavor, some Patriots like the Sons of Liberty encouraged the consumption of smuggled tea as a political protest against the Townshend taxes.
In 1770 most of the Townshend taxes were repealed, but taxes on tea were retained. Resistance to this tax included pressure to avoid legally imported tea, leading to a drop in colonial demand for the Company's tea and a burgeoning surplus of the tea in the company's English warehouses. By 1773 the Company was close to collapse due in part to contractual payments to the British government of £400,000 per year, together with war and a severe famine in Bengal which drastically reduced the Company's revenue from India, and economic weakness in European markets. Benjamin Franklin was one of several people who suggested things would be greatly improved if the Company was allowed to export its tea directly to the colonies without paying the taxes it was paying in London: "to export such tea to any of the British colonies or plantations in America, or to foreign parts, import duty of three pence a pound."[2]
The administration of Lord North saw an opportunity to achieve several goals with a single bill. If the Company was permitted to directly ship tea to the colonies, this would remove the markups of the middlemen from the cost of its tea. Reducing or eliminating the duties paid when the tea was landed in Britain (if it was shipped onward to the colonies) would further lower the final cost of tea in the colonies, undercutting the prices charged for smuggled tea. Colonists would willingly pay for cheaper Company tea, on which the Townshend tax was still collected, thus legitimizing Parliament's ability to tax the colonies.
Provisions of the Act
The Act, which received the royal assent on May 10, 1773, contained the following provisions:
- The Company was eligible to be granted a license to export tea to North America.
- The Company was no longer required to sell its tea at the London Tea Auction.
- Duties on tea (charged in Britain) destined for North America "and foreign parts" would either be refunded on export or not imposed.
- Consignees receiving the Company's tea were required to pay a deposit upon receipt of tea.
Proposals were made that the Townshend tax also is waived, but North opposed this idea, citing the fact that those revenues were used to pay the salaries of crown officials in the colonies.
Implementation
The Company was granted a license by the North administration to ship tea to major American ports, including Charleston, Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston. Consignees who were to receive the tea and arrange for its local resale were generally favorites of the local governor (who was royally appointed in South Carolina, New York, and Massachusetts, and appointed by the proprietors in Pennsylvania). In Massachusetts, Governor Thomas Hutchinson was a part-owner of the business hired by the Company to receive tea shipped to Boston.
Reaction
Many colonists opposed the Act, not so much because it rescued the East India Company, but more because it seemed to validate the Townshend Tax on tea. Merchants who had been acting as the middlemen in legally importing tea stood to lose their business, as did those whose illegal Dutch trade would be undercut by the Company's lowered prices. These interests combined forces, citing the taxes and the Company's monopoly status as reasons to oppose the Act.
In New York and Philadelphia, opposition to the Act resulted in the return of tea delivered there back to Britain. In Charleston, the colonists left the tea on the docks to rot. Governor Hutchinson in Boston was determined to leave the ships in port, even though vigilant colonists refused to allow the tea to be landed.[4] Matters reached a crisis when the time period for landing the tea and paying the Townshend taxes was set to expire, and on December 16, 1773, colonists disguised as Indians swarmed aboard three tea-laden ships and dumped their cargo into the harbour in what is now known as the Boston Tea Party. Similar "Destruction of the Tea" (as it was called at the time) occurred in New York and other ports shortly thereafter, though Boston took the brunt of Imperial retaliation because it was the first "culprit".
Consequences
The Boston Tea Party appalled British political opinion makers of all stripes. The action united all parties in Britain against the American radicals. Parliament enacted the Boston Port Act, which closed Boston Harbor until the dumped tea was paid for. This was the first of the so-called Coercive Acts, or Intolerable Acts as they were called by the colonists, passed by Parliament in response to the Boston Tea Party. These harsh measures united many colonists even more in their frustrations against Britain and were one of the many causes of the American Revolutionary War.
The Taxation of Colonies Act 1778 repealed the tea tax and others that had been imposed on the colonies, but it proved insufficient to end the war. The Tea Act became a "dead letter" as far as the Thirteen Colonies were concerned, and was formally removed from the books in 1861.
Notes
- ^ "Tea Act | Great Britain [1773]".
- ^ a b Ketchum, pg. 240
- ^ Unger, pg. 148
- ^ "The Tea Act". ushistory.org. Retrieved August 11, 2017.
References
- Ketchum, Richard, Divided Loyalties, How the American Revolution came to New York, 2002, ISBN 0-8050-6120-7
- Unger, Harlow, John Hancock, Merchant King and American Patriot, 200, ISBN 0-7858-2026-4
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This page was last edited on 9 January 2024, at 04:03