Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/191

 1773-4] The Boston tea riot. 159 The popular leaders were determined to anticipate such a possibility. A mob disguised as Indians took possession of the vessels and threw the whole of the cargoes into the harbour (December 16, 1773). Two features of this affair are specially worthy of notice. The action of the town-meeting was virtually a claim to override the established government. If the tea had been landed, there was not the smallest compulsion on any individual citizen to consume it. The whole of it might have been left to rot in the warehouses of the consignees. The town-meeting claimed the right to restrict individual liberty of action, and to prohibit individual citizens from consuming a certain article and paying duty on that article even when they wished so to do. At the same time the tea riot illustrated most effectively the control which this de facto government could exercise. From first to last, Samuel Adams and those who acted with him in directing the action of the mob never suffered it to get out of hand. One can hardly suppose that any citizen of Boston expected the home government to pass over such an outrage as the tea riot. In March, 1774, Lord North proposed certain penal measures. One was to close the port of Boston, and transfer all its rights to Salem, till compensation had been made for the destruction of the tea. Appoint- ments and renewal of judges, justices of the peace, and other minor officers were to be vested in the Crown. Offenders might, at the discre- tion of the Crown, be removed to England for trial. At the same time the resignation of Hutchinson gave the home government the opportunity of consolidating military and civil authority by the ap- pointment of General Gage as governor. Gage had the misfortune to be denounced by the King for mildness, and by the colonists for tyranny. As a matter of fact Gage seems to have been a respectable official, intelligent enough to understand the difficulties with which he was confronted, but not vigorous or independent enough to face them effectively. Since the repeal of the Stamp Act, American affairs had awakened no great interest in the House of Commons. Now, however, each of North's punitive measures was the subject of a long and hardly -fought debate. A lack of definiteness and a failure to recognise the patent facts of the case or the general principles of colonial administration run through the whole discussion. This is true alike of the Ministry and of the Opposition. North and his supporters argued as if they had before them a disorderly town, not a continent on the brink of civil war. As essays on the general principles on which dependencies should be governed, Burke's speeches on this and later occasions are admirable. They are not altogether satisfactory as solutions of the administrative difficulties in which the country had been landed by the factiousness of subjects and the ignorance and misjudgment of rulers. North's majority was enough to carry all his measures without CH. V.