The British ministry intended by cunning policy to effect what open measures had failed to do. The East India company were allowed by act of parliament to export tea to the American colonies free from English duties, liable only to threepence per pound, to be paid by the colonists, and which would thus give them tea cheaper than that purchased by the English. Tea was shipped in great quantities to America, which the colonists, who objected as strongly as ever to the principle involved in the measure, determined should never be permitted to land. The pilots, therefore, in Philadelphia harbour were ordered not to conduct the ships into the river, and their cargoes were consequently returned to England; at New York, the governor commanded the tea to be landed under protection of soldiers, but the people gained possession, and prohibited its sale. At Charleston, also, its sale was forbidden and it was stored up in damp cellars to render it unfit for use. At Boston, the tea being consigned to the governor and his friends, it was feared that it would be landed spite of the public, to prevent which a number of men, disguised as Indians, boarded the vessels at night, and threw their cargoes overboard. Three hundred and thirty-two chests of tea were thus broken open and destroyed. The news of this determined and offensive procedure caused the utmost astonishment and indignation in England, and it was resolved in parliament “to make such provisions as should secure the just dependence of the colonies and due obedience to the laws throughout the British dominions and as an especial punishment of the contumacious Bostonians, a bill passed the house in March, 1774, to oblige them to repay the value of the destroyed article, and also interdicting all commercial intercourse with the port of Boston, and prohibiting the landing and shipping of any goods at that place;” and by the same act the custom-house and its dependencies were removed from Boston to Salem, which it was intended to raise on the ruins of its neighbour city and port. [Illustration: THROWING THE TAXED TEA INTO BOSTON HARBOR.] General Gage superseded Hutchinson as governor of Massachusetts, in consequence of the unpopularity of the latter. A number of manuscript letters, written by him to various members of parliament, had fallen into the hands of Benjamin Franklin, now agent in London for Massachusetts, New Jersey, Georgia and Pennsylvania, and having been sent by him to Boston, and circulated extensively though privately, caused his removal from office.