Parliament, finding that this was bad both for the government and for commerce, now abolished all of these duties except that on tea (1770). That duty was retained for a double purpose: first, and chiefly, to maintain the principle of the right of Great Britain to tax the colonies; and, next, to aid the East India Company, which was pleading piteeously for help. In consequence mainly of the refusal of the American colonies to buy tea, the London warehouses of the East India Company were full to overflowing with surplus stock, and the company itself was in a half-bankrupt condition. The custom had been for the company to bring the tea to England, pay a tax on it, and then sell it to be reshipped to America. To aid the company in its embarrassment, the Government now agreed to remit this first duty altogether, and to impose a tax of only threepence (six cents) a pound on the consumers in America. In itself the threepenny tax was a trifle, as the ship-money tax of twenty shillnigs was to John Hampden (S436); but underlying it was a principle which seemed to the Americans, as it had seemed to Hampden, no trifle; for such principles revolutions had been fought in the past; for such they would be fought in the future. The colonists resolved not to have the tea at any price. A number of ships laden with the taxed herb arrived at the port of Boston. The tea was seized by a band of men disguised as Indians, and thrown into the harbor, 1773. The news of that action made the King and his ministry furious. Parliament sympathized with the Government, and in retaliation passed four laws of such severity that the colonists nicknamed them the "Intolerable Acts." The first law was the "Boston Port Act," which closed the harbor to all trade; the second was the "Regulating Act," which virtually annulled the charter of Massachusetts, took the government away from the people, and gave it to the King; the third was the "Administration of Justice Act," which ordered that Americans who committed murder in resistance to oppression should be sent to England for trial; the fourth was the "Quebec Act," which declared the country north of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi a part of Canada.[1] The object of this last act was to conciliate the French Canadians, and secure their help against the colonists in case of rebellion. [1] Embracing territory now divided into the five states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, with eastern Minnesota.