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1773.
On the tenth day of May, 1773, the East India Company were authorized, by act of Parliament, to export their tea, free of duty, to England, but with a tax of threepence a pound to all ports in the American Colonies. This was considered by the colonists as a scheme of the Ministry to prepare them for an unlimited taxation. Advice having been received, that the company had resolved to send out large quantities of tea on their own account, to be sold in the various colonies, the people immediately resolved to send it back to England, in the same ships in which it should come. The pilots were directed how to proceed with the ships on their arrival, and were required to bring them no farther than within the entrance of the harbor. The consignees were summoned to appear at Liberty Tree and resign their office; but to this they replied in letters " daringly affronrive to the town," declining to resign. On the morning of the twenty-eighth of November, the ship Dartmouth, with one hundred and fourteen chests of the long-expected tea, came to anchor near the Castle in Boston harbor, and on the following morning came up |
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