Townshend duty crisis
What were colonists who objected to the new tax program called?
Boston Tea Party
Intolerable Acts American Revolution Townshend Acts Tea Act Tea Party movement
Intolerable_Acts-Passage American_Revolution-1764–1766:_Taxes_imposed_and_withdrawn Townshend_Acts-Raising_revenue Tea_Act-Response Tea_Party_movement-Etymology
On December 16, 1773, a group of Patriot colonists associated with the Sons of Liberty destroyed several tons of tea in Boston, Massachusetts, an act that came to be known as the Boston Tea Party. The colonists partook in this action because Parliament had passed the Tea Act which allowed the British East India Company to sell tea directly to the colonies thereby saving the company from bankruptcy. This made British tea less expensive, which Parliament thought would be a welcome change in the colonies. In addition, there was added a small tax on which the colonists were not allowed to give their consent. Again, Parliament taxed the colonists without their representation. This angered the colonists. News of the Boston Tea Party reached England in January 1774. Parliament responded with a series of acts that were intended to punish Boston for this destruction of private property, restore British authority in Massachusetts, and otherwise reform colonial government in America. On April 22, 1774, Prime Minister Lord North defended the program in the House of Commons, saying:The Americans have tarred and feathered your subjects, plundered your merchants, burnt your ships, denied all obedience to your laws and authority; yet so clement and so long forbearing has our conduct been that it is incumbent on us now to take a different course. Whatever may be the consequences, we must risk something; if we do not, all is over.PThe Boston Port Act,')" the first of the acts passed in response to the Boston Tea Party, closed the port of Boston until the East India Company had been repaid for the destroyed tea and until the king was satisfied that order had been restored. Colonists objected that the Port Act punished all of Boston rather than just the individuals who had destroyed the tea, and that they were being punished without having been given an opportunity to testify in their own defense. The Massachusetts Government Act provoked even more outrage than the Port Act because it unilaterally altered the government of Massachusetts to bring it under control of the British government. Under the terms of the Government Act, almost all positions in the colonial government were to be appointed by the governor, parliament, or king. The act also severely limited the activities of town meetings in Massachusetts to one meeting a year, unless the Governor called for one. Colonists outside Massachusetts feared that their governments could now also be changed by the legislative fiat of Parliament. The Administration of Justice Act allowed the Royal governor to order that trials of accused royal officials take place in Great Britain or elsewhere within the Empire if he decided that the defendant could not get a fair trial in Massachusetts. Although the act stipulated for witnesses to be reimbursed after having travelled at their own expense across the Atlantic, it was not stipulated that any reimbursment for lost earnings during the period for which they would be unable to work, leaving few with the ability testify. George Washington called this the "Murder Act" because he believed that it allowed British officials to harass Americans and then escape justice. Many colonists believed the act was unnecessary because British soldiers had been given a fair trial following the Boston Massacre in 1770. The Quartering Act applied to all of the colonies, and sought to create a more effective method of housing British troops in America. In a previous act, the colonies had been required to provide housing for soldiers, but colonial legislatures had been uncooperative in doing so. The new Quartering Act allowed a governor to house soldiers in other buildings if suitable quarters were not provided. While many sources claim that the Quartering Act allowed troops to be billeted in occupied private homes, historian David Ammerman's 1974 study claimed that this is a myth, and that the act only permitted troops to be quartered in unoccupied buildings. Although many colonists found the Quartering Act objectionable, it generated the least protest of the Coercive Acts. 
In 1764 the British Parliament enacted the Sugar Act and the Currency Act, further vexing the colonists. The following year, the British enacted the Quartering Acts, which required British soldiers to be quartered at the expense of residents in certain areas. Colonists objected to this as well. Britain did not expect the colonies to contribute to the interest or the retirement of debt incurred during its wars, but did expect the Americans to pay a portion of the expenses for colonial defense. Estimating the expenses of defending the continental colonies and the British West Indies at approximately £200,000 annually, the British aimed after the end of the French and Indian War (1754–1763) to raise £78,000 of this amount from American taxpayers. In 1765 British Prime Minister George Grenville and the Parliament passed the Stamp Act, instituting the first direct tax levied on the colonies. All official documents, newspapers, almanacs and pamphlets—even decks of playing cards—were required to have the stamps. The colonists objected chiefly on the grounds not that the taxes were high (they were low), but because they had no representation in the Parliament. Benjamin Franklin testified in Parliament that Americans already contributed heavily to the defense of their portion of the Empire, the local governments raising, clothing and paying nearly twenty-five thousand men, and spending many millions from American treasuries doing so in the French and Indian War alone. In addition to these considerations, by the middle of the eighteenth century, the British Army had a well-established system in which commissions were bought and sold. Officer positions were in high demand among the British aristocracy—the rank of captain or major sold for thousands of pounds, and could be resold once an officer purchased an even higher rank or left the service. In order to keep such a system viable, the British demanded all of the commissions for themselves; commissioning colonial officers who would pay nothing for their commissions was out of the question. Following the Glorious Revolution of the late seventeenth century, stationing a standing army in Great Britain during peacetime would have been politically unacceptable. With some 1,500 well-connected British officers who would have become redundant in the aftermath of the Seven Years' War, London would therefore have had to discharge them if they did not assign them to North America. In 1765 the Sons of Liberty formed. They used public demonstrations, violence and threats of violence to ensure that the British tax laws were unenforceable. While openly hostile to what they considered an oppressive Parliament acting illegally, colonists persisted in sending numerous petitions and pleas for intervention from a monarch to whom they still claimed loyalty. In Boston, the Sons of Liberty burned the records of the vice-admiralty court and looted the home of the chief justice, Thomas Hutchinson. Several legislatures called for united action, and nine colonies sent delegates to the Stamp Act Congress in New York City in October 1765. Moderates led by John Dickinson drew up a "Declaration of Rights and Grievances" stating that taxes passed without representation violated their rights as Englishmen. Colonists emphasized their determination by boycotting imports of British merchandise. The Parliament at Westminster saw itself as the supreme lawmaking authority throughout all British possessions and thus entitled to levy any tax without colonial approval. Parliament insisted that the colonies effectively enjoyed a "virtual representation". Americans such as James Otis maintained the Americans were not in fact virtually represented. In London, the Rockingham government came to power (July 1765) and Parliament debated whether to repeal the stamp tax or to send an army to enforce it. Benjamin Franklin made the case for repeal, explaining the colonies had spent heavily in manpower, money, and blood in defense of the empire in a series of wars against the French and Indians, and that further taxes to pay for those wars were unjust and might bring about a rebellion. Parliament agreed and repealed the tax (February 21, 1766), but in the Declaratory Act of March 1766 insisted that parliament retained full power to make laws for the colonies "in all cases whatsoever". 
Townshend's program. Raising revenue. The first of the Townshend Acts, sometimes simply known as the Townshend Act, was the Revenue Act of 1767. This act represented the Chatham ministry's new approach for generating tax revenue in the American colonies after the repeal of the Stamp Act in 1766. The British government had gotten the impression that because the colonists had objected to the Stamp Act on the grounds that it was a direct (or "internal") tax, colonists would therefore accept indirect (or "external") taxes, such as taxes on imports. With this in mind, Charles Townshend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, devised a plan that placed new duties on paper, paint, lead, glass, and tea that were imported into the colonies. These were items that were not produced in North America and that the colonists were only allowed to buy from Great Britain. The British government's belief that the colonists would accept "external" taxes resulted from a misunderstanding of the colonial objection to the Stamp Act. The colonists' objection to "internal" taxes did not mean that they would accept "external" taxes; the colonial position was that any tax laid by Parliament for the purpose of raising revenue was unconstitutional. "Townshend's mistaken belief that Americans regarded internal taxes as unconstitutional and external taxes constitutional", wrote historian John Phillip Reid, "was of vital importance in the history of events leading to the Revolution." The Townshend Revenue Act received the royal assent on 29 June 1767. There was little opposition expressed in Parliament at the time. "Never could a fateful measure have had a more quiet passage", wrote historian Peter Thomas. The Revenue Act was passed in conjunction with the Indemnity Act of 1767, which was intended to make the tea of the British East India Company more competitive with smuggled Dutch tea. The Indemnity Act repealed taxes on tea imported to England, allowing it to be re-exported more cheaply to the colonies. This tax cut in England would be partially offset by the new Revenue Act taxes on tea in the colonies. The Revenue Act also reaffirmed the legality of writs of assistance, or general search warrants, which gave customs officials broad powers to search houses and businesses for smuggled goods. The original stated purpose of the Townshend duties was to raise a revenue to help pay the cost of maintaining an army in North America. Townshend changed the purpose of the tax plan, however, and instead decided to use the revenue to pay the salaries of some colonial governors and judges. Previously, the colonial assemblies had paid these salaries, but Parliament hoped to take the "power of the purse" away from the colonies. According to historian John C. Miller, "Townshend ingeniously sought to take money from Americans by means of parliamentary taxation and to employ it against their liberties by making colonial governors and judges independent of the assemblies. "Some members of Parliament objected because Townshend's plan was expected to generate only ₤40,000 in yearly revenue, but he explained that once the precedent for taxing the colonists had been firmly established, the program could gradually be expanded until the colonies paid for themselves. According to historian Peter Thomas, Townshend's "aims were political rather than financial". 
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. 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". 
The name "Tea Party" is a reference to the Boston Tea Party, a protest by colonists who objected to a British tax on tea in 1773, without the right to representation, and demonstrated by dumping British tea taken from docked ships into the harbor. Some commentators have referred to the "Tea" in "Tea Party" as the backronym "Taxed Enough Already". 