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398 General History of Europe had no right to tax them, since they were not represented directly in that body. Whatever may have been the merits of their argu- ments, representatives of the colonies met in New York in 1765 and denounced the Stamp Act as indicating " a manifest tendency to subvert the rights and liberties of the colonists." The unpopular stamp tax was repealed, in spite of the opposi- tion of King George III, who, with some of the members of Parliament, thought that the colonists should be punished rather than conciliated. Others were very friendly to them, and a pro- posal was made to permit the colonists to tax themselves, but Benjamin Franklin, then in England, sadly admitted that they would not consent to do so. Parliament then decided to raise a certain amount by duties on glass, paper, and tea, and a board was established to secure a stricter enforcement of the old and hitherto largely neglected navigation laws and other restrictions. The protests of the colonists led Parliament, however, to remove all the duties except that on tea, which was retained owing to the active lobbying of the East India Company, whose interests were at stake. 685. The Boston Tea Party (1773) ; Attitude of Parliament toward the Colonists. The effort to make the Americans pay a very moderate duty on tea, and to force upon the Boston markets the Company's tea at a very low price, produced trouble in 1773. Those who had supplies of " smuggled" tea to dispose of, and who were likely to be undersold even after the small duty was paid, raised a new cry of illegal taxation, and a band of young men was got together in Boston who boarded a tea ship in the harbor and threw the cargo into the water. This so-called Boston Tea Party fanned the slumbering embers of discord between the colonies and the mother country. A considerable body in Parliament were opposed to coercing the colonists. Burke, perhaps the most able member of the House of Commons, urged the ministry to leave the Americans to tax themselves, but George III, and the Tory party in Parliament, could not forgive the colonists for their opposition. They believed that the trouble was largely confined to New England and could