17731776 Club
Parliament passes the Tea Act; Company tea will now be cheaper than smuggled Dutch
Lord North's bill rescues the East India Company's eighteen million pounds of unsold stock, but colonists see the bargain price as bait to make them accept Parliament's right to tax.
On May 10, 1773, King George III gave his royal assent to the Tea Act — a bill crafted by Lord North's ministry to rescue the financially collapsing British East India Company, which had eighteen million pounds of unsold tea sitting in its London warehouses. The act stripped away the London middlemen, let the Company ship tea directly to the colonies, and refunded most of the British import duty — making Company tea cheaper than smuggled Dutch tea, even with the old Townshend three-pence tax still attached. What looked like a gift to colonial consumers instead looked, to many colonists, like a trap: cheaper tea was the bait, and acceptance of Parliament's taxing authority was the hook…
