'No Taxation Without Representation'

The Boston Tea Party, 250 years ago today.

Wikimedia Commons, W.D. Cooper

This is the first in a series of articles the Freemen News-Letter is publishing to mark the 250th Anniversary of the Boston Tea Party.

Today, we mark the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, an act of civil disobedience by a group of Bostonians known as the Sons of Liberty against the taxation strictures of British Parliament.

The clarion cry of these Sons of Liberty, that there should be “no taxation without representation,” is a well-known phrase in America. But the importance of this principle and why it so motivated early American patriots is, perhaps, more lost on our present generation of Americans than at any previous time in our history.

Often, today, we hear people wonder just what it was that the American colonists were so mad about in the years leading up to the American Revolution. For some, the whole affair seems like much ado over small and cursory concerns of taxation, especially by today’s Americans, who tend to be far more concerned with whether everyone pays their “fair share” in taxes than they are with who should have authority to tax and why.

In our day and age, Congress has even delegated some of its taxation powers to the President under certain emergency conditions (power that was exercised by President Trump, for example, to levy the majority of his trade war tariffs). Americans in our time, it would seem, are far less concerned than the early American patriots were with the principle that taxation should originate in a representative body.

Our notions of tyranny, as well, are different than theirs. When we think of tyranny, we think of the systems of absolute despotism concocted by the likes of Hitler, Stalin, Un, and Mao. But the definition of tyranny held by the early patriots was any arbitrary government act. The power to tax, in their view, was the power to destroy, and thus taxation must derive from a representative body. Were it to derive from any other place, it would demonstrate a threat to their fundamental rights to life, liberty, and property. The question of tyranny, for them, extended beyond specific acts of tyranny and encompassed a consideration of the legitimacy of government power and how it could be used if the people were subjected to arbitrary authority.

This is why the small tax on tea to which the Sons of Liberty objected was resisted so stridently. It was a matter of principle. The Boston Tea Party was not about a small tax on tea. It wasn’t even really about taxes at all. It was about British Parliament’s declaration that, despite offering no direct representation to the colonists, they had “full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the colonies and people of America, subjects of the crown of Great Britain, in all cases whatsoever.”

The early American patriots did not believe that “taxation is theft.” To the contrary, all but the most radical would have been happy to comply with any taxation deemed necessary by a political body in which they maintained proper representation. Their objection was to a political body across the sea, claiming an absurd notion of virtual representation, wielding taxation arbitrarily against them. It was that the issue of taxation was representative of a condition in which they had become second-class subjects of the crown.

Despite today being the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, there is very little fanfare of this momentous occasion. Perhaps this is because many Americans have come to view the Boston Tea Party as a mob action predicated upon overly strident views on political principles. Perhaps it’s because of negative views of the modern-day Tea Party movement and its seeming transformation into Trumpism. Perhaps it has something to do with the garb donned by some of the participants in the Boston Tea Party, given the modern concerns with political correctness, cultural appropriation, and blackface.

But we shouldn’t let modern conventions, whether right or wrong, cast aspersions upon the pivotal events that established the deep roots of our free nation. We shouldn’t let modern usage of old terms and symbols dictate whether we continue to use them in their original, historical sense. And we should endeavor to put the Boston Tea Party in the contexts under which it occurred and recognize the momentous nature of what happened in Boston Harbor 250 years ago.

The Boston Tea Party was not the result of a runaway mob nor a case of ad hoc, haphazard destruction pursuant to a riot. It was a planned, deliberate act of civil disobedience carried out by the Sons of Liberty after all other avenues of redress had been exhausted.

The circumstances of the destruction of the tea in Boston Harbor were that American colonists from North to South had committed themselves to a boycott of British-taxed tea in protest to the aforementioned language of the Declaratory Act. This chiefly played out in the refusal to allow British-taxed tea to disembark from the vessels carrying it.

At every other harbor across the American colonies, the ships carrying British-taxed tea returned to sea to peddle their wares elsewhere when they discovered they could not disembark their cargo. But in Boston, Governor Hutchison refused to give in to patriot demands. He would not allow the ships carrying British-taxed tea to leave Boston Harbor. In Boston, the situation had devolved into a stand-off.

The Sons of Liberty viewed the tea as the “seeds of slavery” and were not going to allow the tea to disembark onto American soil. Governor Hutchison was unmoved by any and all demands to allow the ships to leave Boston Harbor because he viewed the tea as a symbol of the dual sovereignty of the Crown and Parliament, to which the American colonists owed their loyalty, whether directly represented or not.

Bostonians attempted to utilize every course of redress to peaceably resolve the situation, even attempting to obtain passes on behalf of the ships so they could leave Boston Harbor. But Governor Hutchison refused to budge.

Even the ship captains and owners themselves were highly displeased with Governor Hutchison's refusal to allow them to leave Boston Harbor (an order, by the way, that was backed up by the threat of British ships and cannons from nearby British forts). In fact, various representatives of all the ships attended meetings of the Sons of Liberty leading up to the Boston Tea Party, and sources from the time claim that the owner of the Eleanor was among the first to suggest that “Perhaps salt water and tea will mix tonight!”

Finally, the Sons of Liberty (with a third of Boston looking on) determined upon the only course of action left to them. They would board the ships and destroy the tea. Such an action would serve three goals: end the standoff over the tea, free the ships so they could leave the harbor, and ensure the successful boycott of British-taxed tea.

And this they accomplished, not as a disorganized mob storming the ships with no order and reckless abandon, but as a methodical and ordered boarding that did no harm to the ships and offered no threats to the crew. They even swept the deck of fallen tea after the destruction of the tea had been accomplished.

The Boston Tea Party was an act of civil disobedience in the face of determined autocracy, a calculated political message built upon reasoned and consistently communicated principles of free government, principles that had been ignored despite every attempt for peaceable redress. Americans should remember the Boston Tea Party as John Adams, no friend of the mob and no easy dismisser of the rule of law, called for it to be remembered:

“This is the most magnificent Movement of all. There is a Dignity, a Majesty, a Sublimity, in this last Effort of the Patriots, that I greatly admire. The People should never rise, without doing something to be remembered—something notable And striking. This Destruction of the Tea is so bold, so daring, so firm, intrepid and inflexible, and it must have so important Consequences, and so lasting, that I cant but consider it as an Epocha in History.”

Justin Stapley received his Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science from Utah Valley University, with emphases in political philosophy, public law, American history, and constitutional studies. He is the Founding and Executive Director of the Freemen Foundation as well as Editor in Chief of the Freemen News-Letter. @JustinWStapley