The events of the 16th of December produced a deep sensation throughout the British realm. They struck a sympathetic chord in every colony which afterward rebeled; and even Canada, Halifax, and the West Indies, had no serious voice of censure for the Bostonians. But the ministerial party here, and the public in England, amazed at the audacity of the Americans in opposing royal authority, and in destroying private property, called loudly for punishment; and even the friends of the colonists in Parliament were, for a moment, silent, for they could not fully excuse the lawless act. Another and a powerful party was now made a principal in the quarrel; the East India Company whose property had been destroyed, was now directly interested in the question of taxation. That huge monopoly which had controlled the commerce of the Indies for more than a century and a half, was then almost at the zenith of its power. Already it had laid the foundation, broad and deep, of that British-Indian Empire which now comprises the whole of Hindostan, from the Himalaya Mountains to Cape Comorin, with a population of more than one hundred and twenty millions, and its power in the government affairs of Great Britain, was almost vice-regal. Unawed by the fleets and armies of the imperial government, and by the wealth and power of this corporation, the Bostonians justified their acts by the rules of justice and the guarantees of the British constitution; and the next vessel to England, after the event was known there, carried out an honest proposition to the East India Company, from the people of Boston, to pay for the tea destroyed. The whole matter rested at once upon its original basis--the right of Great Britain to tax the colonies--and this fair proposition of the Bostonians disarmed ministers of half their weapons of vituperation. The American party in England saw nothing whereof to be ashamed, and the presses, opposed to the ministry, teemed with grave disquisitions, satires, and lampoons, all favorable to the colonists, while art lent its aid in the production of several caricatures similar to the one here given, in which Lord North is represented as pouring tea down the throat of unwilling America, who is held fast by Lord Mansfield (then employed by government in drawing up the various acts so obnoxious to the colonists), while Britannia stands by, weeping at the distress of her daughter. In America, almost every newspaper of the few printed, was filled with arguments, epigrams, parables, sonnets, dialogues, and every form of expression favorable to the resistance made in Boston to the arbitrary acts of government; and a voice of approval went forth from pulpits, courts of law, and the provincial legislatures. [Illustration: POURING TEA DOWN THE THROAT OF AMERICA]