Boston Tea Party Boston Tea Party The Boston Tea Party was a political and mercantile protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston, Massachusetts, on December 16, 1773. The target was the Tea Act of May 10, 1773, which allowed the British East India company to sell tea from China in American colonies without paying taxes apart from those imposed by the Townshend Acts. American Patriots strongly opposed the taxes in the Townshend Act as a violation of their rights. Demonstrators, some disguised as Native Americans, destroyed an entire shipment of tea sent by the East India Company. They boarded the ships and
No taxation without representation the phrase, "no taxation without representation" in a sermon in 1750. The phrase revives a sentiment central to the cause of the English Civil War following the refusal of parliamentarian John Hampden to pay ship money tax. "No taxation without representation," in the context of British American Colonial taxation, appeared for the first time in the February 1768 "London Magazine" headline, on page 89, in the printing of Lord Camden’s "Speech on the Declaratory Bill of the Sovereignty of Great Britain over the Colonies." The English Parliament had controlled colonial trade and taxed imports and exports since 1660. By the