In London, during the spring of 1774, Parliament enacted four punitive laws in response to December’s Boston Tea Party. In the wake of that shocking riot, most Britons saw the Bostonians as spoiled children, and the government’s program was meant to give them the spanking they deserved. After all, hadn’t Britain established the colonies, nurtured them from birth, and sustained them during their long era of unprofitability? Had they not clung to the skirts of the mother country during the recent French and Indian War? Yet ever since, they had balked at paying their share of the expenses.

Moreover, the colonists were protected by the world’s mightiest navy and benefited from Britain’s centuries of experience in statecraft. Despite all this, they talked of autonomy, even independence. And now they had not merely protested, not merely smuggled, not merely boycotted, but wantonly destroyed £9,000 worth of private property. The time had come for Britain to put its foot down.

The government’s first and most draconian response was the Boston Port Act, passed on March 31. It prohibited the loading and unloading of goods in Boston’s waters (except food and fuel brought from other colonial ports) until the town paid for the tea it had destroyed. On May 20 came the Massachusetts Government Act, which replaced the colony’s elected council with an appointed one, gave the royal governor power to select judges, and banned town meetings—even in the remotest village—without permission from the governor.

The Administration of Justice Act, passed the same day, allowed government agents accused of capital crimes in Massachusetts to be tried in other colonies or even in Britain. The intent was to protect them from being railroaded by hostile townsmen, even though local juries had acquitted the Boston Massacre’s perpetrators just a few years before. And finally the Quartering Act, enacted on June 2 and applicable in all the colonies, allowed the governor or military authorities to requisition buildings to lodge soldiers, with private houses exempted and payment of a fair rent required.

All four acts passed with overwhelming majorities. Still, amid the patriotic bluster a few dissenters could be heard. The ailing William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, came to the House of Lords for the first time in two years to urge “a more gentle mode of governing America; for the day is not far distant, when America may vie with these kingdoms, not only in arms, but in arts also.” A decade earlier, as Commons leader, Pitt had brought about a great expansion of Britain’s colonial empire. But now—aging, politically isolated, and racked with gout—he was a man of the past, and his arguments were hooted at by his lordly colleagues.

In the House of Commons Gen. John Burgoyne, who three years later would be defeated at Saratoga, counseled a policy of moderation. He too was shouted down. Edmund Burke, a founder of Anglo-American conservatism and no admirer of revolutionaries, argued for a repeal of