t one of the public
buildings. He called for help, and a corporal and six men were soon on
the scene. But the crowd would not give way. Forty or fifty men came
armed with sticks and pressed around the soldiers, shouting, "Rascals!
Lobsters! Bloody-backs!" throwing snowballs and occasionally a stone,
till in the excitement of the moment a soldier fired his gun. The rest
followed his example, and when the reports died away, five of the
rioters lay on the ground dead or dying, and six more dangerously
wounded.[1]

[Footnote 1: The soldiers were tried for murder and were defended by
John Adams and Josiah Quincy. Two were found guilty of manslaughter. The
rest were acquitted. On the massacre read Frothingham's _Life of
Warren,_ Chaps. 6, 7; Kidder's _The Boston Massacre_; Joseph Warren's
Oration on March 6, 1775, in _Library of American Literature_, Vol.
III., p. 256.]

This riot, this "Boston Massacre," or, as the colonists delighted to
call it, "the bloody massacre," excited and aroused the whole land,
forced the government to remove the soldiers from Boston to an island in
the bay, and did more than anything else which had yet happened, to help
on the Revolution.

%123. Tea sent to America and not received.%--While these things were
taking place in America--indeed, on the very day of the Boston riot--a
motion was made in Parliament for the repeal of all the taxes laid by
the Townshend Acts except that on tea. The tea tax of 3d. a pound,
payable in the colonies, was retained in order that the right of
Parliament to tax America might be vindicated. But the people held fast
to their agreements not to consume articles taxed by Great Britain. No
tea was drunk, save such as was smuggled from Holland, and at the end of
three years' time the East India Company had 17,000,000 pounds of tea
stored in its warehouses (1773). This was because the company was not
permitted to send tea out of England. It might only bring tea to London
and there sell it at public sale to merchants and shippers, who exported
it to America. But now when the merchants could not find anybody to buy
tea in the colonies, they bought less from the company, and the tea lay
stored in its warehouses. To relieve the company, and if possible tempt
the people to use the tea, the exportation tax was taken off and the
company was given leave to export tea to America consigned to
commissioners chosen by itself. Taking off the shilling a pound export
tax in England,