Intolerable Acts and Tea Parties

Matthew Spalding / March 22, 2010

In 1774, in response to the first Tea Party, the British Parliament issued a series of acts designed to control the colonists, stop their protests and restrict their liberty. The American colonists called them “The Intolerable Acts.”

What we have all just witnessed in the debate over health care reform, in substance and in process violates our first principles, takes away our independence and undermines the very rule of law. If left standing, this law places us evermore firmly on the course of becoming a heavily centralized European-style nation, stifled by government run health care and ruled more by bureaucrats than elected legislatures. This is not “progress” but the revival of a failed, undemocratic, and illiberal form of statism.

These acts are intolerable.

In 1763, with the British victory over France in the Seven Years’ War (which began in North America as the French and Indian War), Great Britain controlled—in addition to the thirteen American colonies— New France (Canada), Spanish Florida, and all the lands east of the Mississippi River. It also had massive debts, incurred in large part in the defense of that empire, and so the English Parliament looked for the first time to the American colonies as a source of revenue. (more…)