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 It would be best if they had both...[Furthermore, the right of every British subject is that the] supreme power cannot take from any man any part of his property, without his consent in person, or by representation. Otis simultaneously refuted, in "The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved", a contemporary argument that attempted to rationalise virtual representation on the basis of the colonial agents' alleged influence on British policy. "As to the colonists being represented by the provincial agents," he wrote, I know of no power ever given them but to appear before his Majesty, and his ministry.