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 aware of any obstructions that lie in the way of it. While Knox, Grenville and Burke were not necessarily opposed in principle to direct colonial representation in Parliament, Grenville nonetheless conjectured that Parliament retained a constitutional right to virtually represent the colonial subjects. Burke supported the doctrine of virtual representation in Britain. Yet in his Parliamentary speech of 1774, entitled "On American Taxation", Burke responded to the suggestion that America was virtually represented in Parliament by remarking, What! does the electric force of virtual representation more easily pass over the Atlantic than pervade Wales, which lies in your neighborhood? or