y
of men, to whose proceedings the loss must be consequently attributed,
and the probability is that it was a part of their plan from the
beginning."

"We do console ourselves," wrote John Scollay, chairman of the Selectmen
of Boston, and prominent in the affair, "that we have acted
constitutionally."

"The most magnificent movement of all," wrote John Adams in his diary.
"There is a dignity, a majesty, a solemnity in this last effort of the
patriots that I greatly admire. This destruction of the tea is so bold,
so daring, so firm, so intrepid and inflexible, and it must have so
important consequences, and so lasting, that I cannot but consider it as
an epoch in history. The question is whether the destruction of the tea
was necessary? I apprehend it was absolutely and indispensably so.... To
let it be landed would be giving up the principle of taxation by
Parliamentary authority, against which the continent has struggled for
ten years.... But, it will be said, it might have been left in the care
of a committee of the town, or in Castle William. To this many
objections may be urged."

The historian Ramsay says: "If the American position was right in
relation to taxation, the destruction of the tea was warranted by the
great law of self-preservation. For it was not possible for them by any
other means within the compass of probability to discharge the duty
they owed to their country."

"I cannot but express my admiration of the conduct of this people,"
writes an 'Impartial Observer' in the "Boston Evening Post" of December
20, 1773.... "I shall return home doubly fortified in my resolution to
prevent that deprecated calamity, the landing the tea in Rhode Island,
and console myself with the happier assurance that my brethren have not
less resolution than their neighbors."

"It became," says Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, "a simple question, which
should go under, British tea or American liberty? That volunteer band of
Liberty Boys performed their work 'better than they knew,' averting
contingencies which must have caused immediate bloodshed, and
accomplishing results of the greatest importance to the American cause."

Wm. C. Rives, in his Life of James Madison, says: "This memorable
occurrence was undoubtedly, in the immediate sequence of the events
which it produced, the proximate cause of the American Revolution."

A Tory pamphleteer of the time gives us the Loyalist view of the affair.
He says: "Now the crime of the