The Tea Act proved a startling disappointment. Instead of happily acquiescing in cheap tea, Americans exploded in wrath not so much from popular feeling as from agitation inspired by the merchants, who saw themselves eliminated as wholesalers and their trade ruined through underselling by the East India Company. Ship owners and builders, captains and crews, whose livelihood was in smuggling, also felt threatened. Political agitators, delighted to have a cause again, accommodated them. They raised the horrid cry of “Monopoly” about to grip America by a company notorious for its “black, sordid
...more
