Intolerable Acts
INTOLERABLE ACTS
INTOLERABLE ACTS. The four Intolerable Acts, also known as the Coercive Acts, formed Britain's punishment of both the town of Boston and the province of Massachusetts for the destruction of the East India Company's tea on 16 December 1773. They were rushed through Parliament in the spring of 1774. Their purpose was to show rebellious colonials that, unlike 1766, when the Stamp Act was repealed, and 1770, when four of the five Townshend taxes were withdrawn, Britain would not retreat this time.
The Boston Port Act closed Boston to seaborne commerce until the town paid for the tea. Since trade was the town's life, the act and its enforcement by the Royal Navy amounted to a blockade, which was an act of war. The Massachusetts Government Act abolished the province's royal charter of 1692. The new structure would replace a provincial council elected by the assembly with one appointed by the governor in the name of the king. Towns would meet once per year, solely to elect local officers. County courts would enforce the act's provisions. The Administration of Justice Act let the Crown remove the trials of public officials under accusation to another province or to Britain on the ground that they could not get fair trials in local courts. The Quartering Act allowed British commanders to billet soldiers in colonials' homes if no barracks or public buildings could be found. The commander in chief in America, General Thomas Gage, became governor of Massachusetts.
The Quebec Act, passed at the same time, granted legal privileges to the Catholic Church in the former French province, established nonrepresentative government there, and gave Quebec control of much of the interior north of the Ohio River. It was not part of the package of punishments. But the Intolerable Acts, the Quebec Act, and the naming of Gage all figured among the "abuses and usurpations" listed in the Declaration of Independence.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ammerman, David. In the Common Cause: American Response to the Coercive Acts of 1774. New York: Norton, 1975.
Bushman, Richard L. King and People in Provincial Massachusetts. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985.
EdwardCountryman