b 
186 THE DEEPER SIGNIFICANCE 
mob law, yet it is only very loose thinking that would 
attempt to liken one case to the other. Our fore- 
fathers knew the difference: the Hutchinson male- 
factors they cast into jail, but the memory of the 
King Street victims they kept green for many a year 
by an annual oration in the Old South Meeting 
House, on the baleful effects of quartering soldiers 
among peaceful citizens in time of peace. We are 
now ready to consider the Tea Party, which by no 
stretch of definition can properly be included among 
cases of mob law. We are at length prepared to see 
just what the Tea Party was. 
Early in 1770 Lord North made up his mind that 
the Revenue Act could not be enforced, and was a 
source of needless irritation, and he proposed to repeal 
it. But a full repeal would put things back where 
they were after the repeal of the Stamp Act, and even 
worse, for it would be a second victory for the Amer- 
icans. The king could not afford to put such a 
weapon into the hands of the New Whigs; so it was 
decided to retain the duty on tea alone. In Parlia- 
ment, certain Whigs objected that it would avail 
nothing to repeal the other duties, if that on tea were 
kept, since it was not revenue but principle that was 
at stake. Bless their simple hearts, the king knew 
all about that, and he kept the duty-on tea, simply in 
order to force another fight on the question of prin- 
ciple. It was a question on which he was growing 
more and more fanatical, and nothing could prevail 
upon him to let it alone. 
So for the next three years tea was the symbol 
with which the hostile spirits conjured. It stood for 
everything that true freemen loathe. In the deadly 
