1. “The Boston Port Act: March 31, 1774.” Avalon Project – United Kingdom: Parliament. Yale University, Lilian Goldman Law Library. Retrieved October 29, 2018, avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/boston_port_act.asp. The Americans have tarred and feathered your subjects, plundered your merchants, burned your ships, refused all obedience to your laws and authority; But our behavior has been so gentle and forgiving for so long that it is now up to us to take a different path. Whatever the consequences, we must take risks; If we don`t, it`s over. [2] The Intolerable Acts (passed from March 31 to June 22, 1774) were criminal laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 after the Boston Tea Party. The laws were intended to punish Massachusetts settlers for their opposition to the Tea Party protest in response to the British government`s tax changes. In Britain, these laws were called coercive laws. On December 16, 1773, a group of patriotic settlers associated with the Sons of Liberty destroyed 342 cases of tea in Boston, Massachusetts, an act that became known as the Boston Tea Party. The colonists participated in this action because Parliament had passed the Tea Act, which granted the British East India Company a monopoly on the sale of tea in the colonies, thus saving the company from bankruptcy.
This made British tea cheaper. In addition, a small tax has been added. This angered the settlers. News of the Boston Tea Party reached England in January 1774. Parliament responded by passing four laws. Three of the laws were aimed at directly punishing Massachusetts. This was done for the destruction of private property, to restore British authority in Massachusetts, and to reform colonial government in America. The Coercive Acts of 1774, known as the Intolerable Acts in the American Colonies, were a series of four pieces of legislation passed by the British Parliament to punish the Massachusetts Bay Colony for the Boston Tea Party.
The four acts were the Boston Port Act, the Massachusetts Government Act, the Administration of Justice Act, and the Quartering Act. The Quebec Act of 1774 is sometimes included as one of the coercive laws, although it is not related to the Boston Tea Party. These repressive acts provoked strong colonial resistance, including the session of the first Continental Congress attended by George Washington in September and October 1774. Britain hoped that coercive laws would quell the rebellion in New England and deter the remaining colonies from uniting, but the opposite happened: all the colonies saw the penal laws as further evidence of British tyranny and rallied to Massachusetts` aid, sending supplies and planning a new resistance. The settlers called the new laws “intolerable acts” because they systematically restricted freedoms they considered sacred and inviolable. If the destruction of the tea was against the law, those responsible should have been brought to justice. Collective punishment is unacceptable and totally abhorrent to the rule of law. Coercive laws trampled on their economic freedom, their right to self-government by their own consent and elections, their right to a jury trial, and their right to property. From the beginning, the settlers insisted on enjoying all the freedoms of the free English. Now, however, it seemed that, like the Irish, they were ruled like conquered foreigners. Although they were led by Samuel Adams and his Sons of Liberty and organized by John Hancock, the names of many Boston Tea Party participants remain unknown. Thanks to their Native American costumes, only one of the Tea Party authors, Francis Akeley, was arrested and imprisoned.
The Boston Port Act was the first of the laws passed in 1774 in response to the Boston Tea Party. He closed Boston Harbor until the settlers paid for the destroyed tea and the king was convinced that order had been restored. The settlers argued that the Port Act punished all Boston, not just people who destroyed tea, and that they would be punished without having had an opportunity to testify in their own defense. [3] In Martin Luther King Jr.`s letter from a Birmingham prison, he explains that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. He says: “One has not only a legal but also a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. In 1773, the American people were not well represented by the British government and were willing to fight for the rights they deserved.