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CHAPTER ONE THE COERCIVE ACTS The Boston Tea Party caused an even greater sensation in the mother country than had the Stamp Act riots. "There never was, since the [Glorious ] Revolution, so important a crisis in the constitution of this country," a London newspaper told its readers.l Even the opposition in Parliament said something had to be done about Boston. There was, in fact, little disagreement about the need of hitting the town with a bill of pains and penalties.2 Debate was over the nature of the punishment and its severity. The bill of pains and penalties-actually a statute enacted into law by both houses of Parliament-withdrew from Boston "the officers of his Majesty's customs," and made it unlawful to unladen or to load nonmilitary goods in the bay called the "harbor of Boston." The port was to be closed to all civilian traffic "until it shall sufficiently appear to his Majesty that full satisfaction has been made by or on behalf of the inhabitants of the said town of Boston" to the East India Company for the teas destroyed in the Tea Party. Everyone understood the unstated purpose of the legislation. It was not only to punish Boston. More importantly, Parliament was legislating its claim to supremacy, a fact Lord North emphaSized by insisting that the money Boston was ordered to pay the East India Company was damages or compensation. It was not to be referred to as a tax. "I trust we are not now upon any question of that kind," he told the Commons. "We 9 10 THE COERCIVE ACTS are upon a question wherein we will agree whether the right of British subjects should be asserted, whether their property should be protected, whether their injuries should be redressed, and not whether it is right or wrong to lay a tax upon the colonies."3 North stated several purposes for the Boston Port Act-to punish Boston , compensate the East India Company, protect the customs officers, prevent smuggling, and preserve British trade-but no one was misled. The main intention was to assert parliamentary supremacy over the colonies .4 "Is this then the best measure in the present case?" he asked, answering that it was. "It is to tell America, that you [the House of Commons ] are in earnest, if we do not mean totally to give up the matter in question. We must assert our right at this time, while ... it is in our power."5 North wanted the members of the Commons to ask themselves, "whether or not we have any authority there," meaning Boston, adding that "it is very clear we have none, ifwe suffer the property ofour subjects to be destroyed.... We must punish, controul, or yield to them." The sovereignty of Parliament, the secretary of state would later instruct the governor of Massachusetts, "requires a full and absolute submission."6 On the whole, the British felt the Boston Port Act mild punishmentappropriately tough and prudent, perhaps, but certainly not severe.7 The administration thought the legislation so reasonable it would be selfexecuting . "The good of this act," Lord North assured the Commons, "is, that four or five frigates will do the business without any military force."8 Boston would have no choice but to pay the East India Company and the crown would have no difficulty reopening the harbor. A second general assumption was that the other American governments would not care what Parliament did to Boston or to Massachusetts Bay, that, in North's words, "[t]he rest of the colonies will not take fire at the proper punishment inflicted on those who have disobeyed your authority ; ... if we exert ourselves now with firmness and intrepidity, it is the more likely they will submit to our authority."9 Again, as always, Lord North depreciated the constitutional aspects of a dispute he hoped was merely political, and, again, he discounted the extent to which principle determined American reaction. The Boston Port Act stunned colonists almost as much as the Boston Tea Party had stunned London. The merchants and citizens of rival ports from New York to South Carolina resolved that the Act "is, in the highest degree arbitrary in its principles, oppressive in its operation, unparalleled in its rigour, indefinite in its exactions, and subversive of every idea of British liberty."lO Future loyalists as much as future rebels were shocked. One, a future chiefjustice ofQuebec, expressed fear that "we shall lose all that Attachm[en]t...

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