WHENCE THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT?

Most of the colonists in Boston in 1773 were British citizens. They were not rabble rousers, nor were they disloyal to England.

Tea, as you know, was and is important to Englishmen. For centuries, every afternoon has featured “tea time,” during which the British pause for a refreshing snack of crumpets (a savory/sweet bread) and tea.

The British East India Tea Company had been awarded a contract to ship tea to the colonies in the New World. They got the tea mainly from the Indian subcontinent and China and delivered it to the various settlements in America.

Taxes on tea had gotten so high that colonists began buying “bootleg” tea from the Dutch, who did not tax the tea, making it much cheaper to buy.

In May of 1773 the British Parliament passed the Tea Act. The Tea Act placed a 25% ad valorem tax on tea, making it very expensive.

In part, this helped to keep the British East India Tea Company from filing bankruptcy, Parliament believing that it was a company too big to allow to fail.

The tax on tea had been put in place without input from the colonists, even though it was they who were most affected by it, since the act exempted those living in England from paying it.

Understandably the colonists were put off by the Tea Act and began protesting it.

After much pleading with Parliament to reconsider the tax, and after Parliament refused to do so, a group of colonists boarded the ships of the British East India Tea Company and destroyed the tea by throwing it into Boston Harbor.

This was one of the iconic events that eventually led to the American Revolution.

Parliament’s reaction was not to yield to the colonists’ desire to elect their own representatives, rather it was to enact the Coercive Acts, which closed Boston’s commerce. The Coercive Acts provided that commerce would remain closed until the tea that had been destroyed was paid for by the Americans.

The Boston Tea Party was a grass roots protest against a government that had ceased listening to those it governed.

TODAY WE HAVE A NEW TEA PARTY MOVEMENT.

It is a grass roots movement, not funded by large entities, but mostly by those directly involved in it.

The Tea Party movement demands that the federal government listens to those it governs.

Its fundamental principles are: 1. the smallest possible government; 2. individual responsibility; 3. the lowest tax rate possible (to maintain the country’s need for a firm union, a fair system of justice, peacefulness among it citizens, a strong national defense, the promotion [not provision] of the general [not specific] welfare, and the keeping of liberty for its citizens); and 4. respect for the Constitution.

With which of those principles of today’s Tea Party movement do you disagree and why?

(If you choose to respond, please give specific reasons and/or data, don’t call Tea Party members names…that indicates ignorance on your part and does not help your cause).