188 THE DEEPER SIGNIFICANCE 
a price far below its market value; this tea, with the 
duty upon it, would cost American customers less 
than the tea smuggled from Holland, and in this way 
the Americans were to be ensnared into surrendering 
the great principle at issue. 
Under these circumstances the sending of the East 
India Company’s tea-ships to America was in no sense 
an incident of commerce. The king’s arrangement 
with the Company deprived it of its commercial char- 
acter. It was simply a political challenge. As Lord 
North openly confessed in the House of Commons, 
it was merely the king’s method of “trying the ques- 
tion” with America. It was, moreover, an extremely 
insulting challenge. A grosser insult to any self-re- 
specting people can hardly be imagined. It was King 
George’s way of asking that perennial Boss Tweed 
question, “ What are you going to do about it?” It 
was the most far-reaching political question that was 
raised in that age, for it involved the whole case of the 
relations of an imperial government to its colonies; a 
solemn question to be settled not by mobs, but by the 
sober and deliberate sense of the American people, 
and it was thus that it was settled in Boston once and 
forever. 
Circumstances made Boston the battle-ground, and 
gave added point and concentrated meaning to every- 
thing that was done there. The royal challenge was 
aimed at the colonies as a whole, and ships were sent 
to New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston, as well as 
to Boston. In all four towns consignees were ap- 
pointed to receive the tea and dispose of it after pay- 
ing the duty. But in the three former towns the 
consignees quailed before the wrath of the people, 
