Lessons of the Tea Party

Due to protests by the colonies, the British Parliament repealed the Stamp Act on March 18, 1766.  The reason I mention this is that our public schools often fluff over this fact, making the Stamp Act the cause of the American Revolution because people didn’t want “taxation without representation.”  Not so.  The Stamp Act was ten years gone by 1776.  In 1773 the Boston Tea Party took place. It was a political protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston, on December 16, 1773. This protest was in defiance of the Tea Act of May 10, 1773.  The Tea Act taxed tea from British colonies in India and didn’t allow colonists in N. America to trade with French, Dutch or any other country to buy tea. So it was at heart a protectionist legislation with the government getting a cut in the form of a tax. Because of the Tea Party, “Parliament responded in 1774 with the Coercive Acts, or Intolerable Acts, which, among other provisions, ended local self-government in Massachusetts and closed Boston's commerce. Colonists up and down the Thirteen Colonies in turn responded to the Coercive Acts with additional acts of protest, and by convening the First Continental Congress, which petitioned the British monarch for repeal of the acts and coordinated colonial resistance to them. The crisis escalated, and eventually the American Revolutionary War began.”  (Wikipedia)

            Think of this from the standpoint of a British Member of Parliament.  They were trying to support British Empire jobs (British East India Co.) against what they saw as unfair trade. They were regulating the tea industry. And they were guarding the border against unfair, un-tariffed smugglers.  They built a “wall” and were making the colonists pay for it.

            Two lessons from this.  First, the “no taxation without representation” argument of the American Revolution was just a sideline issue and the Tea Party was a stunt that many, including John Adams and George Washington saw with disgust.  Unjust taxation appears buried in the Declaration of Independence as item 17 in the list of 27 grievances against the British Crown, “For imposing taxes upon us without our consent.” Interestingly enough, item 16 is, “For cutting our trade with all parts of the world.”  Apparently the loss of free trade was equally appalling.  The Declaration actually is a litany of abuses of power—depriving us of trial by jury, dissolving our Representatives, taking us beyond the seas to be tried, refusing to allow us to share Christianity with the natives, etc. So if you’ve been taught, as is common by liberals in public schools, that the Revolution was all about money, you’ve been taught wrong. With libs, it’s always about “who gets the money.”

            Secondly, what Donald and Hillary advocate, protectionism of products and jobs of our home country as compared with free trade of imports, is what the Boston Tea Party actually protested. The former Stamp Act that also required colonists to buy home-grown British products rather than cheaper imports, was a source of protest too.  The colonists were “free traders” to the hilt. Parliament suspected them as a den of smugglers and mixed breeds. In some sense Parliament was right.  Americans saw themselves as free men, capable of competing with anybody. Let the free trade begin. Let the immigrants come in.  Or as grievance # 7 against the king states, “He has endeavored to alter the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws of naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage the migrations hither, and raising conditions for the appropriation of lands.”

            I guess I’ve always enjoyed being of the Party of Lincoln, free men without shackles and regulation, welcoming other free men under the law, providing opportunity and free enterprise, and not headed by some jackass who wants to punish and avenge others, protect his fortune, control the markets and people, and divide us against each other by race and social status.  I love the 1930’s Norman Rockwell painting of the poor guy with the old leather coat standing up at a town meeting and given an attentive ear by all the rest of the citizens.  Those were Americans!  I care not for French Revolution avengers intent to guillotine the rich or the churchmen or any other person.  Not by Mussolini or Lenin righting wrongs for some class of people.  In this Easter season, I am reminded that when I was low, so low that I had no way of escape, it was not men who set me free, but I was set free by God. And when the truth has made you free, you shall be free indeed.