Polly Dogood

A Proposal to Return the Tea

Wherein the Author observes that the first Tea Party was thrown against a Monopoly, and wonders how large a Harbour the next would require.

To the Readers of this Publick Blog,

Every Schoolchild knows the Story of the Boston Tea Party, and nearly every Schoolchild knows it wrong. We are taught that the Colonists dumped the Tea because they were taxed without Representation, and that is true as far as it goes. But it does not go far enough. The Tea Act of 1773 did not raise the Price of Tea. It lowered it.

Here is what it did. The East India Company, the largest and best-connected Corporation in the World, was near to Ruin, with a Mountain of unsold Tea in its Warehouses. So Parliament came to its Rescue. It gave the Company the Right to sell its Tea directly in the Colonies, through Merchants of its own choosing, with a Tax Advantage no honest Colonial Trader could match. It was a Monopoly granted by the Government to a Corporation too large to be allowed to fail, and the Bill was sent to the Customer.

The Men who dumped three hundred and forty-two Chests into Boston Harbour on the 16th of December understood this perfectly. They were not throwing a Tantrum about the Price of a Beverage. They were refusing to let a Government and a Monopoly arrange the Country between them.

I raise this because I have been reading what the Founders thought of great Wealth, and they thought about it a good deal more than we are told.

My own Grandpapa Franklin wrote to Mr. Robert Morris on Christmas Day of 1783 that the Property a Man needs to live is his natural Right, which none can justly take from him: "But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition." A great Fortune, in other Words, is not made by one Man alone. It is made possible by the Laws, the Roads, the Courts and the Peace that all of us keep up, and the Publick may ask for its Share.

Mr. Jefferson, travelling in France in 1785, saw the Misery of a Country where a few owned nearly everything, and wrote to Mr. Madison of "this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind." His Remedy will sound familiar: "to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise." In 1816, an old Man, he hoped the Nation would "crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."

And Mr. Madison, who drafted the Constitution itself, called "the various and unequal distribution of property" the most common and durable Source of Faction, and in 1792 praised Laws that would "reduce extreme wealth towards a state of mediocrity, and raise extreme indigence towards a state of comfort." In Virginia they went further still, and abolished the old Laws of Entail and Primogeniture, so that no Family might pile up an Estate generation upon generation and call it a Nobility.

I will be honest, as I promised to be. These were wealthy Men, and the Wealth of too many of them was wrung from People they held in Bondage. Nor did they agree among themselves. Mr. Hamilton set out quite deliberately to bind the rich to the new Government, believing the Country could not stand without them, and Mr. Jefferson thought him half a Monarchist for it. They quarrelled over Banks and Debts and Manufactures until the two of them could scarcely sit in the same Cabinet.

And that is precisely what makes the rest worth hearing. These Men disagreed about Wealth: how it should be made, how it should be taxed, how much of it the Republick could bear. Yet on one Point nearly all of them agreed. They did not fear that some Men would grow rich. They feared that Riches would become Rule. When the Founders, who could agree on almost nothing, agree on a single Thing, it is worth our while to listen.

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Look about you.

We have Men today whose Fortunes are counted in hundreds of Billions, more than the whole Treasury of many a Nation. I do not begrudge any Man his Ingenuity or his Luck. But I notice what the Fortunes are spent on. They buy Newspapers, and the Platforms where the Publick now does its Talking. They pay for Elections, and for Lobbyists by the Regiment. For a Season, one of them was handed an Office in the Government itself, and the Run of its Departments. And last Year Congress passed what its Champions called the One Big Beautiful Bill.

Those same Champions are very fond of warning us against the Redistribution of Wealth, and so it falls to me to congratulate them on accomplishing one: from the Meek to the Mighty, from the Governed to those who pull their Strings. By the Congressional Budget Office's own Reckoning, it left the poorest Households poorer, the richest richer, and some ten million more Americans without Health Insurance within the Decade. The Meek, we were promised, shall inherit the Earth. Congress appears to have voted to postpone the Date. It is the East India Company's Bargain over again: the Favor to the Few, and the Bill to the Many.

Meanwhile the Rent is due, and the Grocer's Prices climb, and there are Families in every City in this Republick sleeping in their Cars. Mr. Madison's "extreme wealth" and "extreme indigence" have both arrived, and they are not getting any closer to Mediocrity or to Comfort.

So here is my Proposal. I do not propose we throw anything into the Harbour. The Harbour, I am told, is already quite crowded with Yachts.

I propose instead that we return to the Tea Party its true Meaning, which was never "no Taxes," but "no Government bought for a Monopoly." I propose that we take Mr. Jefferson at his Word, and lighten the Load on those below a certain Point, and ask more of the higher Portions of Property as they rise. I propose that we take Grandpapa at his, and remember that every great Fortune was built upon the Commons, and owes the Commons something back. And I propose that we elect a Congress that remembers it too, on the 3rd of November, before the next Bill is written by the Men it is written for.

And I will say the rest plainly, because it is not a Joke.

At some Point, so much becomes too much. A King with the Gout, reigning over a People who go hungry, has failed as a Christian, and as a Man, however splendid his Table. My own Grandpapa had the Gout, and wrote a Dialogue in which it scolded him for his Appetite and his Idleness. He at least had the Grace to listen.

And a Patriot with a Yacht has failed as a Patriot, so long as a single one of his Countrymen sleeps without a Roof. Love of Country is not measured by the Size of the Flag on the Stern.

P.S. The Tea dumped in Boston Harbour was worth, by the Company's own Reckoning, nearly ten thousand Pounds. I mention it only to reassure our wealthier Readers that at today's Prices they could replace the whole Cargo out of their Pocket Change, and never miss their Dinner.