Letter IX

On Colonial Resistance and the Boston Tea Party
April 9, 1774

We come now to the consideration of our author's final settlements, and in page 14 we find him thus expressing himself:

“Even the arbitrary and despotic governments of France and Spain maintain their authority over their American colonies but very imperfectly, inasmuch as they cannot restrain them from breaking through those rules and regulations of exclusive trade for the sake of which all colonies seem to have been originally founded.”

What then shall we say in regard to such colonies as are the offspring of a free constitution? And how are such colonies to be governed — without using force or compulsion, or pursuing any measure repugnant to their own ideas of civil or religious liberty?

In short: How shall we govern without violating the very principles on which our constitution was built?

Here we touch the real problem: We have mistaken dominion for duty, and coercion for constitutional government. We have imagined that the colonies were planted for the profit of ministers, not the rights of men.

But when power forgets justice, the people must remember it. And so we come to Boston.

I cannot but declare my own opinion — that those concerned in the destruction of the tea in Boston were a band of virtuous patriots, whose names, when once made public, will doubtless be held in eternal veneration by their countrymen.

The glorious illegality they achieved — if every statute, whether just or unjust, be properly comprehended in the word law — was an act of absolute moral and political necessity, and therefore exempt even from good laws.

It was:

• an act of singular wisdom,
• of strict justice,
• of remarkable temper and forbearance, considering their provocations.

It was done in self-defense, with the greatest good order and decency, and unaccompanied with incivility to any one, or the smallest damage to anything in the ships besides the treacherous tea.

That tea — for the reasons I have given — and agreeable to the spirit of the law of nature and nations, was justly forfeited to the injured Americans.

The East-India Company are not entitled to any satisfaction or payment for the same.

I am, &c.
John Cartwright

HAL 1776 Commentary

“Cartwright doesn’t apologize for Boston — he canonizes it.”
— HAL 1776

In Letter IX, Cartwright enters dangerous waters: the realm of direct action — and makes his boldest stand yet. Where others saw vandalism or treason in the Boston Tea Party, Cartwright saw a moral act of political clarity.

“The glorious illegality… was an act of absolute moral and political necessity.”

This is a British radical defending American revolutionaries, not out of sentiment, but by invoking natural law, constitutional principle, and political ethics.

He reframes the destruction of the tea not as a crime, but as a civil exorcism — purging corruption, not attacking commerce.

“Unaccompanied with incivility… remarkable temper and forbearance.”

To Cartwright, the Boston Tea Party wasn’t just justified — it was admirable. And in asserting that the East India Company deserved no compensation, he struck at the imperial-commercial axis that fueled British oppression.

This letter is a watershed moment. It shows that resistance to empire could be measured, just, and lawful in the highest moral sense.

“Cartwright made it clear: in the court of conscience, the tea was guilty — and Boston was right.”
— HAL 1776