Partial Repeal and the Tea Principle

Parliament's partial repeal received royal assent on 12 April 1770, weeks after the shooting on King Street. The repeal took off most of the Townshend duties. It kept the duty on tea. That remaining duty is why tea, not glass or paint, became the test of the next three years. The Townshend Revenue Act, passed in June 1767, whose duties took effect on 20 November 1767, is the statute that had laid those duties. The 1770 repeal did not wipe the slate clean.

The Tea Act received royal assent on 10 May 1773. It let the East India Company ship tea to the colonies and sell it through chosen agents. The tea could be offered more cheaply than smuggled tea and still carry the duty. Colonists who objected were not arguing about a higher shop price. They were arguing that Parliament had no right to tax them without consent. A cheap taxed tea was still a tax.

On 16 October 1773 a Philadelphia town meeting said the point in one sentence: the duty on tea landed in America was a tax laid without consent, and there is no property in what another can take by right without consent. The meeting treated anyone who helped unload that tea as an enemy to the country. Price was not the principle. Consent was.