5. The tax was repealed in 1766, but Parliament at the same time asserted its right to tax.
6. The Townshend Acts (1767) tried to raise a revenue by import duties on goods brought into the colonies. At the same time the arrival of the troops for defense of the colonies caused new trouble; in Boston the people and the troops came to blows (1770).
7. The refusal of the colonists to buy the taxed articles led to the repeal of all the taxes except that on tea (1770).
8. The colonists still refused to buy taxed tea, whereupon Parliament enabled the East India Company to send over tea for sale at a lower price than before.
9. The tea was not allowed to be sold. In Boston it was destroyed.
10. As a punishment Parliament enacted the five Intolerable Acts.
11. The First Continental Congress (1774) thereupon petitioned for redress, and called a second Congress to meet the next year.
FOOTNOTES
[1] That is, compel the colonists to furnish quarters—rooms or houses— for the troops to live in. Read Parkman's Montcalm and Wolfe, Vol. I, pp. 439-440.
[2] In order to detect and seize smugglers the crown had resorted to "writs of assistance." The law required that every ship bringing goods to America should come to some established port and that her cargo should be reported at the customhouse. Instead, the smugglers would secretly land goods elsewhere. If a customs officer suspected this, he could go to court and ask for a search warrant, stating the goods for which he was to seek and the place to be searched. But this would give the smugglers warning and they could remove the goods. What the officers wanted was a general warrant good for any goods in any place. This writ of assistance, as it was called, was common in England, and was issued in the colonies about 1754. In 1760 King George II died, and all writs issued in his name expired. In 1761, therefore, application was made to the Superior Court of Massachusetts for a new writ of assistance to run in the name of King George III. Sixty merchants opposed the issue, and James Otis and Oxenbridge Thacher appeared for the merchants. The speech of Otis was a famous plea, sometimes called the beginning of colonial resistance; but the court granted the writ.