After reading James Chalmers’ supposed Plain Truth, one has to admit that the author loves his tea. First, the Tory says that the colonists were to have the tea “at competitive prices” and that would have “[benefitted] the colonies” and improved the “financial state of the East India Tea Company” (Chalmers, 1776). Next, he suggests that the dumping of the tea at Boston Harbor was a tactic to change tax collectors in the thirteen colonies and that it was a “useless destruction of property” on the Americans’ part (Chalmers, 1776).
People of America, all but one of the claims the man says in defense of his precious tea is correct. Indeed, there were many losses on December 16, 1773, as the tea was worth ten thousand British pounds (Foner, 2011, p.194). Similarly, if the region were to assume the role of the slaves that the mother country continues to bestow on the people of North America and buy the tea, then they would have saved money and profited the merchants. However, it was not English tea. They did not grow the leaves in Britain, and they certainly did not toil for the merchandise. It was all from India, another unfortunate area that is under our oppressors. Britain continues to take advantage of different lands by forcing them to do what would benefit her interests. If people do not pursue the thoughts of independence, America and the rest of the Monarch’s colonies will be just as an incurable disease operates. The infection is the Crown’s need to oppress subjects by imposing taxes, and without fast action, we will never rid ourselves of the disease.
As Thomas Paine says in his groundbreaking work, Common Sense, it is absurd for “a continent to be perpetually governed by an island” (1776, par.83). At the same time, it makes no sense to assume that the one who oppresses a people has the answer to their problems. Tea is not enough to mend the tear between Americans and the English. We should have better sense, and that is the plain truth!
References
Chalmer, J. (2001). Plain Truth (1776). In A. S. Draper, The Boston Massacre: Five Colonists Killed by British Soldiers (Headlines from History) (1 ed.). New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc.
Foner, E. (2011). Give Me Liberty!: An American History (3rd ed., Vol. I). New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Paine, T. (1776). Common Sense. Retrieved from Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/147/147-h/147-h.htm
