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protests by the colonies, the British Parliament repealed the Stamp Act on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.
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