(Boston Tea Party) | Very rare printing of the Votes and Proceedings of two November 1773 Boston town meetings, demonstrating the contention that "Tea was the agent that unified the colonies"

(Boston Tea Party)

The Votes and Proceedings of the Freeholders and other Inhabitants of the Town of Boston, in Town Meeting Assembled, According to Law, the 5th and 18th days of November. 1773. [Published by Order of the Town.]. Boston: Printed for Joseph Greenleaf, and sold at the Printing-Office, in Hanover-Street, 1773

Small 4to (198 x 134 mm), 2 quires, 15 printed pages, final page blank. Uncut and stab-sewn as issued.

A seminal and very rare record of the genesis of the Boston Tea Party: according to Rare Book Hub, this is the first copy to appear at auction since the sale of the historical library of Dr. George C. F. Williams at Anderson Galleries, 17 May 1926.

This pamphlet records the proceedings of two Boston town meetings moderated by John Hancock at Faneuil Hall on 5 and 18 November 1773 regarding Parliament’s Tea Act of 10 May 1773 and the alarm caused by "the reports that the East-India company in London are about shipping a cargo, or cargoes of tea into this and other colonies." These two meetings laid the foundation for the 29 November meeting called by Samuel Adams, which lead directly to “the Destruction of Tea” in Boston Harbor on 16 December.

The minutes of the 5 November meeting note that “the duty imposed by parliament upon tea landed in America, is a tax on the Americans, or levying contributions on them without their consent” and that “the express purpose for which the tax is levied on the Americans, namely, for the support of government, the administration of justice, and the defence of his Majesty’s dominions in America, has a direct tendency to render assemblies useless, and to introduce arbitrary government and slavery.”

The meeting concluded that a committee be sent to the consignees of the tea “and request them, from a regard of their own characters, and the peace and good order of this town and province, immediately to resign their appointments.” The pamphlet includes the response to the committee from one of the consignees, Thomas Hutchinson Jr., essentially deferring an answer.

“Tea—‘harmless, necessary tea, which, with the harmless, necessary cat, made up the sweet content of the domestic hearth’—was the agent that unified the colonies, precipitated their opposition to Great Britain, and in the end, turned America into an independent nation of coffee drinkers.

“The tea situation should have been solely Britain's concern—not one to make the colonists react so violently. It started with the greed and irresponsibility of the proprietors and directors of the East India Company. Possessing extensive lands and military forces in India, the company monopolized the sale of tea to the British Empire. Its importance to England's economy was expressed by the King, who welcomed an arrangement that would ‘in some degree curb if not eradicate what otherways must render that trade the ruin instead of a source of restoring the finances of this country.’ 2 Since 1767, the company had helped restore the government's finances by an annual payment of £400,000. But the company was in a precarious position. … By 1772, as a result of disastrous management, it could no longer contribute money to the government's treasury. Seventeen million pounds of tea were stored in its London warehouses-unsold and a debt of £1,300,000, mostly to the government, had to be met. The company was barely one step from bankruptcy.” Frederick, Lord North, First Lord of the Treasury, Chancellor of the Exchequer, “hit upon what he considered a splendid plan to reduce the company's tea supply. By permitting the company to export the tea in their warehouses directly to America, duty free, it would bypass the middleman—the London merchant who bought the tea at auction for later distribution. Americans would be able to buy the tea cheaper than Englishmen could in England. Of course, Americans would still have to pay the three-pence-per-pound tax that North insisted be retained when the Townshend duties were repealed to sustain ‘that just right which I shall ever wish the mother country to possess, the right of taxing Americans’" (Miller, pp. 257–58).

Boston was not the only American port to protest the Tea Act. While four ships carrying East India Company tea were sent to Boston in September and October 1773, three others were sailing, respectively, to New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston. Colonial protesters in those three towns were able to force the tea consignees to resign or to return the tea to England. But in Massachusetts, Governor Thomas Hutchinson refused to relent, perhaps because two of the Boston consignees were his sons. Hutchinson’s attitude provoked an equally intransigent response among the colonists, and British North America took another step closer to Revolution.

A remarkably fresh copy of this vital witness of the prologue to the American Revolution.

REFERENCES

Adams, American Independence 92; ESTC W2451; Evans 12692; Sabin 6567; cf. Lillian B. Miller, et al., In the Minds and Hearts of the People: Prologue to the American Revolution, 1760–1774 (New York Graphic Society, 1974)