( ui ) 
these ship3 100 lb. weight of the best tey that 
you can aett,' This same ' tey ' was, as we shall 
see, at a later day the principal export from 
China and a most valuable brancli of the Com- 
pany's commerce. It was the tea of China which 
was to furnish the means of jjoverning India." 
(It has been said, thouf^h not quite accurately, 
that the Eajjlish East India Company owed its 
birth to pepper; we may now add, that its 
amazing growth was largely due to tea.) 
Under the year 1685 Mr Willson cites the 
testimony of the young German traveller 
Mandelslo as to the habitual drinking of tea 
by the English at Surat, and in a foot note 
he says ; — "As the popularity of tea increased, 
we find the Company writing to Surat 
in 1687 that very good Thea might be put up in 
tutinneague potts, and well and closely packed in 
chests or boxes, as it will always turn to accompt 
here now it is made the Compas commodity ; 
whereas, before there were so many sellers of that 
coffiodity that it would hardly yield half its cost, 
and some trash IHiea from Baul;am was forc't to 
be thrown away or sold for 4d. or 6d. cer pound.' " 
(Compare the extracts copied by me from the 
Company's records and printed on page 188 of vol. 
iii. of the Monthly Literary Register.) About 
1690, Mr Willson tells us, a duty of 5s was laid on 
tea in England. We need not wonder, therefore, 
that when the rival New Company began its 
operations it made an attempt (in 1699) to capture 
part of the tea trade, nor that the Old Company 
checkmated this move by sending three ships with 
supercargoes to China to initiate a direct China 
trade. Not until 1715, however, after the two 
Companies had been amalgamated, was a regular 
trade established with Canton; and " In 1716 
green tea first began to be used in England, before 
which period Bohea was used in polite circles." 
Thus writes Mr Willson, and quotes Pope, who in 
1712 sang :— 
'■ Oh, had I rather nnadmired remained 
Iq some lone Isle or distant northern land ; 
Where the gilt chariot never marks the way, 
Where none learn ombre, none e'er taste Bohea 
(Note the pronunciation of the last word : " tea" 
also was in Pope's time and long afterwards called 
tay.") " But," adds Mr Willson, " whatever the 
variety of the leaf, the growing popularity of ' the 
cup that cheers but not inebriates' could only 
enrich the Company's coffers," 
The events in India calling for detailed notice, 
China is not mentioned in the next hundred pages, 
and then we read :— 
The importation of tea from Canton continued on 
a hage and protitable scale, although it was subjected 
from time to time to much exasperating native in- 
terfenence and huge duties in England, which, how- 
ever; the public cheerfully paid. From time to time 
we hear of disputes running high between the Com- 
pany and the English tea dealers. " These gentlemen 
loudly called out for what they termed a redress of 
grievance, insisting on the Company's altering a new 
. method they began at sale of putting up a single chest 
of tea in a lot, and that, to prevent some people from 
being customers, the lots should be as large as 
formerly. They presented a memorial to the Court of 
Directors; which was taken into consideration and 
deputies admitted to speak in support of it. After 
which the Court declared, they would proceed in this 
sale on the plan before concerted and they would have 
another sale in November next, and immediately 
ot)ntini»ed the sale witbotit inteprnptiou " {Oentltman s 
Magmine, 1718). 
On the next page we read that " In 176^ 
four of the Company's ships had arrived from 
China with no less than 1,707,000 lb. weight of 
tea, the duty on which at 4s. per lb. amounted 
to £341,000 lb. sterling. Anderson estimates that 
one-third of this tea was exported, and, therefore, 
involved Customs drawbacks, but thcie would still 
remain a net duty of £227,600. ' What an immense 
sum is this,' he exclaims, ' to be paid to the public 
for one single commodity?' What is still 
more surprising is that there was anybody 
in England to consume tea with a duty 
upon that article of 4s. a lb. ! " In 1772 the 
Company vvas in troubled waters, and, on the 
appointment by the House of Commons of a 
Select Committee of inquiry, ic was found that, 
"To add to its financial troubles, the Company 
had been making an attempt, by means of an 
indemnity upon tea, to destroy the foreign East 
India Companies. This did not meet with all the 
success it deserved [I], and caused the Company 
a loss of close upon a nuUion." 
In the extract from the Preface quoted at the 
beginning of this review the " Boston Tea Party " 
is referred to. The following is Mr WillsDu's 
account of this episode and its connection with 
the Company ; — 
We now turn to an affair in which the Company 
was closely concerned which was happening not in the 
Bast, but in the West. In 1769 the British Govern- 
ment had imposed a duty on all tea entering the porta 
of the American Colonies. There was no logical 
reason why this tax should not have been imposed ; a 
tax was necessary, tea was a luxury, and the money 
was intended to support the administration of the 
Colonies, then becoming a burden on the mother 
country. Bat perhaps owing to the manner in which 
the measure was passed and applied, the tea duty be- 
come obnoxious, and the Americans only waited for 
an opportunity of forcibly displaying their repugnance. 
In 1773 some 17,000,000 lb, of tea lay unsold 
in the Company's warehouses.* Money, as we 
have seen, was urgently needed to resume 
the company from extreme embarrassment bordering 
on bankruptcy, and the happy plan was adopted 
of securing a license from the Treasury to export 
this tea to America on the Company's own 
account, instead of having, as formerly, to dispose of 
it to middlemen. The Company, therefore, selected 
its own Agents in the different Colonies as con- 
signees, the latte^ being persons friendly to the 
British connection, 
If the tea could be once landed it \^ould, owing to 
its low price— lower than in England (the export 
duty having been withdrawn) — doubtless find purcha- 
sers, in spite of the resolve of the more rampant 
colonists not to receive any tea whatsoever until the 
duty was repealed. In the meantime they consumed 
tea smuggled by their own compatriots, who were 
amassing large fortunes in this business. Fearing 
that the Company would be able to undersell them, 
those smugglers entered warmly into a conspiracy to 
prevent the landing of the tea, or, if they were defea- 
ted in this, to boycott all those concerned in its 
handling and sale. In 1773 three ships freighted with 
tea reached Boston Harbour, on the 16th December 
some half-hundred of the so called "Sons of Liberty," 
in the guise of Mohawk Indians, led by Samuel 
Adams, Hancock (whose uncle was a wealthy tta 
smuggler) and other malcontents, boarded the 
• A report was made in December, 1772, to the effect 
that the Company had in their warehouses in London 
16,000,000 lb of tea. At the same time the Company's 
home assets were valued by a surveyor, when it was 
estimated that their India Hotise and warehonses 
wete wprtb £214,000, 
