and that in the year 1773, an Act passed, to allow a drawback of the duties of customs on the exportation of tea to His Majesty’s colonies or plantations in America, and to empower the Commissioners of the Treasury to grant licences to the East India Company, to export tea, duty free;
and by the operation of those and other laws, the minds of His Majesty’s subjects in the British colonies have been greatly disquieted a total stop is now put to the export trade with the greatest and most important part of North America, the public revenue is threatened with a large and fatal diminution, the petitioners with grievous distress, and thousands of industrious artificers and manufacturers with utter ruin....”
AMERICAN APPEAL TO FRANCE, JANUARY 5, 1775
(Callender, Economic History of U.S., p. 167. Wharton, The Revolutionary Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States, II, p. 245)
Sir,
The Congress, the better to defend their coasts, protect their trade, and drive off the enemy, have instructed us to apply to France for eight ships of the line, completely manned, the expense of which they will undertake to pay. As other princes of Europe are lending or hiring their troops to Britain against America, it is apprehended that France may, if she thinks fit, afford our independent States the same kind of aid, without giving England any just cause of complaint. But if England should on that account declare war, we conceive that by the united force of France, Spain and America, she will lose all her possessions in the West Indies....
We also beg it may be particularly considered, that while the English are masters of the American seas, and can, without fear of interruption, transport with such ease their army from one part of our extensive coast to another, and we can only meet them by land marches, we may possibly, unless some powerful aid is given us or some strong diversion be made in our favour, be so harassed and be put to such immense distress, as that finally our people will find themselves reduced to the necessity of ending the war by an accommodation....
B. Franklin,
Silas Deane,
Arthur Lee.