In 1773, however, Britain furnished
Adams and his allies with an incendiary issue. The powerful East India
Company, finding itself in critical financial straits, appealed to
the British government, which granted it a monopoly on all tea exported
to the colonies. The government also permitted the East India Company
to supply retailers directly, bypassing colonial wholesalers who had
previously sold it. After 1770, such a flourishing illegal trade existed
that most of the tea consumed in America was of foreign origin and
imported, illegally, duty- free. By selling its tea through its own
agents at a price well under
the customary one, the East India
Company made smuggling unprofitable and threatened to eliminate the
independent colonial merchants at the same time. Aroused not only
by the loss of the tea trade but also by the monopolistic practice
involved, colonial traders joined the radicals agitating for independence.
In ports up and down the Atlantic coast, agents of
the East India Company were forced to resign, and new shipments of
tea were either returned to England or warehoused. In Boston, however,
the agents defied the colonists and, with the support of the royal
governor, made preparations to land incoming cargoes regardless of
opposition. On the night of December 16, 1773, a band of men disguised
as Mohawk Indians and led by Samuel Adams boarded three British ships
lying at anchor and dumped their tea cargo into Boston harbor. They
took this step because they feared that if the tea were landed, colonists
would actually comply with the tax and purchase the tea. Adams and
his band of radicals doubted their countrymen's commitment to principle.
A crisis now confronted Britain. The East India Company
had carried out a parliamentary statute, and if the destruction of
the tea went unpunished, Parliament would admit to the world that
it had no control over the colonies. Official opinion in Britain almost
unanimously condemned the Boston Tea Party as an act of vandalism
and advocated legal measures to bring the insurgent colonists into
line.