Philadelphia Tea-Party Letter—1773

PHILADELPHIA TEA-PARTY LETTER—1773.67 into any of them, which can pain the most virtuous mind or give the least offence to the eye or ear of modesty." 13 This somewhat complacent reflection of the great Quaker grammarian may well be considered alongside the words of Bagehot already quoted. They represent two diametrically opposed conceptions of literary education, one artistic, and the other moral. The evidence here submitted is not exhaustive; it could not be so. But enough has been presented to prove,—what was perhaps worth proving before the first-hand memory of the old guarded Quaker education was quite lost,"—that Cowper, an Anglican poet, so nearly expressed the sentiments and aspirations of the Society of Friends during a large part of the nineteenth century that he may be justly termed the titled Poet of Quakerism . (Concluded) William Wistar Comfort. Haverford College. PHILADELPHIA TEA-PARTY LETTER—1773. Introductory Note. The following letter signed by Thomas and Isaac Wharton, Jonathan Browne and Gilbert Barclay, is supplementary to the letters of James and Drinker concerning the Philadelphia tea troubles, contributed by our late Friend Thomas B. Taylor to the Bulletin, 2: 3 (1908), 86-110, and 3: 1 (1909), 21-49. This letter is from a copy in the manuscript archives of the House of Lords, London, and was transmitted for the information of that body by the East India Company, January 26, 1774. It is not to be found in the Wharton letters published in the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 15 : 385 ff., nor 13Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Lindley Murray, p. 95. 14" Perhaps the best time to write history," said Thiers in the preface of his Histoire de la Révolution, " is just when the participants are ready to die. One can then collect their testimony without sharing their passions ." 68BULLETIN OF FRIENDS' HISTORICAL SOCIETY. in the manuscript Letter Book of Thomas Wharton in the Library of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. The cargo of tea shipped to Philadelphia consisted of six hundred ninety-eight chests and was invoiced at £21,075-10-6. This was equal to the amount sent to New York, and considerably in excess of the cargoes sent to Boston and Charleston. The Philadelphia shipment was consigned to Abel James and Henry Drinker, Thomas and Isaac Wharton, Jonathan Browne, and Gilbert Barclay. By reading the following letter, in connection with the contributions referred to above, and the newspaper accounts of the time, one has a very complete picture of a lively and important episode in colonial history, and one with which several prominent Friends were conspicuously connected. R. W. Kelsey. Haverford, Pa., 2/15/1921, Philadelphia, 28th. December, 1773. Gentlemen, We did ourselves the honor of communicating to you, on the 17th instant (no Conveyance having offered before then) a brief, tho' faithful state of the strong opposition, formed in this and other Colonies, against the introduction of your Teas, during the existence of the American Revenue Act, and we acquainted you, we firmly believed, it was the determined Resolution of the Inhabitants not to suffer those Teas to be landed, but to force both them and the Ship immediately to depart from hence: Notwithstanding all the Pains, which had been taken to persuade them to let the Teas be landed and stored, until you could be apprized of their Situation. But the all-prevailing opinion, that they could not be landed, without the Duty being satisfied, and thereby a Door opened for future Imposts on America, Joined to the Conduct of the Boston People in destroying your Teas in their Port (of which, the inclosed printed Account is the best extant, that we know of), determined them, that your Teas should not be landed. In consequence of which, on Captain Ayres's Arrival here on the 26th instant in the Ship PHILADELPHIA TEA-PARTY LETTER-1773.69 Polly, he found the opposition to them so universal, (he having yesterday attended the greatest meeting of the People ever known in this City, and which were collected solely to inform Captain Ayres, that they would not suffer the Teas to be enter'd, much less landed) that no...