Similarities Between the
Old and New Tea Parties

The short version of the original Boston Tea Party is that in December 1773, a bunch of angry colonists dumped a bunch of tea into Boston Harbor because they didn’t want to pay the taxes on it. While that's true as far as it goes, the complete story is somewhat more complicated.

For one thing, the tea tax wasn't new in 1773. It had been on the books since 1767, and despite on and off attempts at a boycott, many of the colonists had resigned themselves to paying it. Others turned to tea smuggled in on Dutch ships, or patronized importers who bribed the tax collectors.

Meanwhile, the East India Company had huge quantities of tea in its London warehouses. To help it sell the surplus in the American colonies, the British Parliament passed a new Tea Act. It did several things: It allowed the EIC to pay the tea tax in London, instead Boston. This made the tax less conspicuous and cut down on bribery. It also gave the EIC a subsidy on tea sold in America, so it could undercut the smugglers, and it let the EIC ship tea to America on its own account and sell it to a handful of favored wholesalers, instead of working through British and American middlemen.

Some British government officials advised the prime minister, Lord North, to just eliminate the tax, since the amount taken in barely covered the costs of collecting it. But North was insistent: The tax had to stay.

He had several reasons for this. One was to avoid giving the American rebels a victory; another was to establish the fact that London could tax the colonies when it wanted. Most important, however, was that monies from the tea tax were earmarked to pay colonial officials — especially judges. This made those judges dependent on the central government. If there were no tea tax, the colonists would collect their own taxes in order to pay — and have control over — their own judges.

The British government, in other words, used indirect methods to collect a hated tax, while pretending to save the citizens money. It also distorted the market to bail out big corporate allies and pay off favored businessmen; and all of this was done to strengthen the central government’s authority over the lives of its citizens.

Fortunately, it didn't work. Both the general public and businessmen who were losing out on the deal caught on to what was happening, and the rest is history.

In both 1773 and today, the government expected the public to accept a loss of liberty in exchange for a supposedly greater benefit (“cheap” tea, “universal” medical care). The British ministry thought the public would be too dumb to see through the Tea Act, or too lazy to care, just as the Democrats thought today’s public would lap up the sweet falsehoods of Obamacare. And in both cases, the government didn’t know when to stop in the face of passionate and growing resistance.

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A Parliament Didn't Get the Last Tea Party Either
Deliberative legislative bodies tend to be dismissive when the people express an opinion the ruling class doesn't share.