Volume 3, Chapter 58, The Coercive Acts
News of the Boston Tea Party and the other resistance to East India Tea hit the British
like a thunder clap. Since the repeal of the Townsend duties over three years earlier,
news of the American colonies had dropped out of the British press, and while Massachusetts
had continued to be a slight irritant, it was generally assumed that everything was
was tranquil in the colonies, hence no one in Britain had an inkling of the furor that
the Tea Act would cause. Suddenly America erupted again and now the British saw that
the colonial problems had never been really quieted. They also began to see something
more, that generally only the extreme polls are logical or viable and that in between
The American states are logically self-contradictory and unstable mixtures that impel persistently
toward one pole or the other.
And so the British began to realize that continued drift and repeated near-conflicts with Americans
were unworkable, and that Great Britain must finally choose either to pursue appeasement
and go back to the salutary neglect and colonial quasi-independence of the pre-Seven Years
War era or to take the hard line and crush the colonist and impose absolute British rule.
The choice was appeasement and peaceful coexistence on the one hand or maximum force for total
victory on the other.
In keeping with its nature, of course, the Tory imperialist ruling clique opted unhesitatingly
for coercion and the mailed fist. When the news of the crisis came to London, Benjamin
Franklin was amid an unhappy imbroglio. While trying as agent for Massachusetts to present
a Massachusetts petition for removal of Hutchinson and Oliver, the news of Franklin's responsibility
The possibility for unearthing the Hutchinson-Oliver letters and sending them to Boston came to light.
Reaction to Franklin's underhanded methods was widespread and understandably bitter,
especially because of Franklin's presumed Tory leanings.
When news of the Tea Party arrived shortly thereafter,
It was not difficult for the British to leap to the absurd conclusion that the whole affair
was a diabolical plot conceived by the sinister subversive devil Dr. Franklin.
Franklin became the General's scapegoat and whipping boy, was quickly dismissed from his
lucrative royal post as Deputy Postmaster General of America, and was roundly denounced
As John Adams later wrote, in reaction to the continuing hold of this myth on the minds
of the British, the history of our revolution will be one continued lie from one end to
the other.
The essence of the whole will be that Dr. Franklin's electrical rod smote the earth
and out sprang General Washington.
To compound the irony, Franklin at the same time was sending his stern Tory disapproval
of the Tea Party to the Massachusetts Committee of Correspondence.
Franklin denounced the extremism of destroying what he chose to call private property, a
A designation that surely stretched the concept of private to the breaking point. Franklin
also vainly demanded that Massachusetts repair the damages and pay compensation to the company.
Within the cabinet, the ministry prepared to crush the rebellious Americans. The Bedfordites,
the Grenvillites, the King's friends, and King George himself howled for revenge and
Suppression. Only Lord North himself and the wiggish Lord Dartmouth, half-brother of North
and Secretary of State for the Colonies, who had replaced Hillsborough a year and a half
earlier, pleaded for confining the mailed fist to rebellious Boston. They largely won
the day. But this old policy of isolating and smashing the leading center of resistance
could no longer work. The American colonists were too united from years of struggle and
from the growth of such revolutionary institutions as a network of local committees of correspondence.
The Crown called Parliament into session in early March 1774 and presented a series of
The series of four coercive acts designed to bring Britain's might to bear upon Boston.
First came the Boston Port Act, which brutally closed the port of Boston to all commerce
until the town granted compensation for the lost tea to the East India Company and paid
the foregone duties to the Crown.
The Act also transferred the Royal Custom House from Boston to Salem for the duration
of the Act.
No ships were to load or unload at Boston, except for military stores and whatever food
or fuel might be cleared by the Customs authorities.
Opposition in Great Britain was revitalized.
The Chathamites and the bulk of the Whigs had condemned the Tea Party, but they could
would not sanction coercion of the colonies. One of the few British supporters of the Tea
Party had been the Wilkite radical MP Alderman Bull, who urged clearing Boston of British
soldiers, brutes that have too long been suffered to live there. The plan supposedly to isolate
and then coerce Boston into submission had stemmed from Lord Dartmouth and his undersecretary,
John Pownall
Chatham, in opposition, urged a demand for reparation before coercion, but the most effective
opposition came from the Whigs. Edmund Burke, William Doudswell, the West Indian merchant
Rose Fuller and young Charles James Fox. But the opposition was in vain. With even Colonel
General Barré and General Conway speaking in favor of the bill, the Boston Port Bill
was quickly passed on March 30, was approved by the King the following day, and became
effective on June 1. Charles Vann, MP from Wales, was the most extreme proponent, calling
for the destruction of Boston, that nest of locusts. Great Britain added to the injury
of the People of Massachusetts by seeming kindness of removing Hutchinson, but replaced
him as governor and captain general by General Thomas Gage, who was sent to Boston to announce
the stormy tidings and to put the bill into effect. Gage was also to transfer the seat
of Massachusetts government from Boston to Salem. The Boston Port Act was soon followed
in early April by the Massachusetts Government Act. North and Dartmouth had hoped to end
their coercive measures with the presumably temporary wrap on the knuckles of the Port
Act. They now allowed themselves to be pressured into approving the second and drastically
permanent act of suppression, a task made easy by the growing mental instability of
of Lord North
Following the Council and guidance of former Massachusetts Governor Francis Bernard, the
Tories were about to see their old dream of destroying the preciously guarded Massachusetts
Charter come true. The Massachusetts Government Act changed the Massachusetts Council to
a body appointed by the King, each counselor continuing in office at the King's pleasure.
The Massachusetts governor was now given exclusive power to appoint and dismiss all executive
and inferior judicial officers, including justices of the peace and sheriffs. Superior
court judges were to be nominated by the governor for appointment by the king. Juries would
now be chosen by the sheriff instead of democratically elected by the people of the towns.
Finally, to crush the local radical centers of colonial resistance, the act barred town
meetings from being held, or an agenda acted upon except by express permission of the governor.
The only minor victory for moderation was Dartmouth's deletion of an original proposal
to bring the tea rioters to trial in Great Britain.
This savage act had been staunchly opposed by some of the leading Whigs and Liberals,
Sir George Seville, Colonel Barré, who had reluctantly supported the Port Act, Charles
James Fox, General Conway, and Edmund Burke.
Notwithstanding, it passed by a large majority, was approved on May 20, and became effective
on July 1 and August 1, different provisions taking effect on the two days. This was as
far as North and Dartmouth wanted to go. But meanwhile, severe pressure for still further
measures descended upon them from the rest of the cabinet, led by the Grenvillite Lord
Privy Seal, the Earl of Suffolk, and the Earl of Sandwich, a Bedfordite. Sandwich and Suffolk
pushed through the Administration of Justice Act introduced in mid-April. This act provided
exemption from any high crimes committed in Massachusetts by royal officials in the course
of their duties. Any royal official committing a capital crime in the course of collecting
revenue or suppressing a riot would now have his trial transferred from the local courts
to Great Britain, provided that the Governor and Council decided that the official could
not receive a fair trial in Massachusetts. This exemption act passed overwhelmingly despite
the opposition of Colonel Barré and others, and the King signed it on May 20. No other
act could have been more calculated to arouse the fears and hostilities of the colonist
Then the fourth coercive act, the Quartering Act, which revived the troubles over quartering
British troops on the colonist. This act applied to all the colonies and forced the provinces
to supply unoccupied houses and dwellings to quarter British troops at the location
desired by the latter. For example, to put up the troops in Boston proper rather than
Government Barracks at Castle William. The Quartering Act, introduced at the same time as the Third Coercive Act, whipped through Commons without debate and was opposed in the House of Lords only by Chatham. The measure received royal approval on June 7. The beleaguered Whigs heroically tried to counterattack during the passage of the Coercive Acts. In mid-April, Rose Fuller moved at repeal of the Tea Act
and was backed by Fox, Barre, and an eloquent and widely circulated speech by Edmund Burke.
However, the motion was voted down by an overwhelming majority.