Note 14 — Colonial Chapter in the History of American Education.

Thus, in regard to the chivalrous destruction of tea in Boston harbour, in 1773, an American historian says:

"The object of the mother country in imposing a duty of three pence per pound on tea imported by the East India Company into America, while it was twelve pence per pound in England, was mainly to break up the contraband trade of the colonial merchants with Holland and her possessions."... "Sons of the merchants [of Boston] had become rich in the traffic, and a considerable part of the large fortune which Hancock [President of the Insurgent Congress] inherited from his uncle was thus acquired."... "It was fit, then, that Hancock, was ... was respondent in the Admiralty Courts, in suits of the Crown, to recover nearly half a million of dollars, ... should be the first to affix his name to the [declaration of independence] which, if made good, would save him from ruin."...—Sabine's American Loyalists, Vol. I. (Boston, 1865), pages 8, 9, 13.

So much for the much-valued patriotic act, which was a vast pecuniary gain to Hancock and other contraband tea merchants of Boston.