he king had a hand in making the fire
hot. He had been vexed by his unsuccessful tariff, and was now
especially irritated that his concessions had brought about no result in
one important particular.

Until the present every shipmaster had been a smuggler, and all the
Whigs dealt in smuggled goods. This was according to old English
practice, but as a matter of fact illicit trade was more decorous in
America than in England. Whereas in Cornwall the forces of the smugglers
were so strong that they chased the revenue cutters into harbors and
landed their goods by bright moonlight, in America the appearances of
legality were gravely preserved.

Nevertheless the result was the same, and in one quarter was actually
serious. The recent tariff had brought to the royal treasury scarcely
three hundred pounds from tea. The situation was no better now that the
tea-duty was the only one remaining. So completely did America, while
still drinking tea in quantity, avoid the duly imported article, that
the revenue of the East India Company fell off alarmingly. On pathetic
representations of the financial state of the company, the king gave
permission, through a subservient Parliament, for the company to export
tea to America free even of the English duty. The company had lost
hundreds of thousands of pounds since the Townshend Acts went in force;
now by favorable terms it was to be enabled to undersell in the colonial
market even the smuggled teas. Taking advantage of this new ruling, tea
was promptly shipped, in the autumn of 1773, to different consignees in
Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston.

It was confidently expected that the colonies would buy the tea. No one
in the government supposed that the Americans would be blind to their
own interests. This much, indeed, was admitted by the leaders among the
Whigs, that once the tea was on sale Yankee principle might be sorely
tempted by Yankee thrift. Indignant at the insidious temptation,
determined that no such test should be made, and resenting the
establishment of a practical monopoly throughout the colonies, the
leaders resolved that the tea should not be landed.

It is an odd fortune that connected the Chinese herb so closely with
the struggle of principle in America. To this day, while the issues are
obscured in the mind of the average American, he remembers the tax on
tea, and that his ancestors would not pay it. Picturesque tales of
ladies' associations depriving