Our circular called for a subscription book. All our paper-covered copies have been subscribed for. The balance of the edition is nicely bound in cloth, with embellished covers. Price, (as before), five dollars.
The publisher will welcome all new matter relating to the Tea question, and will be especially grateful for any hitherto unpublished portraits. Such material is desired for possible publication in a companion work to "Tea Leaves."
All who desire the Portraits and Illustrations separate from this volume, to be used in works on American history, can obtain them from the Publisher.
In conclusion, we thank our friends who have kindly assisted us, and if we have not given all credit by name, the neglect has been unintentional.
Among the causes which led to the American Revolution, the one most prominent in the popular judgment is the "tax on tea," imposed by Great Britain on her American colonies. The destruction, in Boston harbor, in December, 1773, of the cargoes of tea sent to that port by the East India Company, was undoubtedly the proximate cause of that memorable event, and in view of this fact, the occurrence,--"by far the most momentous in the annals of the town," says the historian Bancroft,--merits a more thorough and particular consideration than it has yet received.
The silence necessarily preserved by the actors in this daring exploit, respecting their connection with it, has rendered this part of the task one of no little difficulty. Their secret was remarkably well kept; and but for the family traditions which survive, we should know very little of the men who composed the famous Boston tea party.
Nevertheless, the attempt to gather up the scattered fragments of personal reminiscence and biography, in order to give a little more completeness to this interesting chapter of our revolutionary history, is here made. The fortunate recovery, by the publisher of this volume, of the letters of the American consignees to the East India Company, and other papers shedding light upon the transaction, affords material aid in the accomplishment of our purpose.
When King Charles II. had finished that first cup of tea ever brewed in England,--the gift of the newly-created East India Company,--no sibyl was at hand to peer into the monarch's cup and foretell from its dregs, the dire disaster to his realm, hidden among those insignificant particles. Could a vision of those battered tea chests, floating in Boston harbor, with _tu doces_, in the legible handwriting of history, inscribed upon them, have been disclosed to him, even that careless, pleasure-loving prince would have been sobered by the lesson. It was left for his successor, George III., who failed to read the handwriting on the wall,--visible to all but the willfully blind,--to realize its meaning in the dismemberment of an empire.