BRITISH TEA TAX.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 134, 8 June 1929, Page 11 (Supplement)

BRITISH TEA TAX.

EVENTFUL HISTORY.

CAUSED BLOODSHED AND

REVOLUTION.

IMPOST LONG FORGOTTEN.

When Winston Churchill, as British Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced to an astonished and much overtaxed populace that the impost on tea would be repealed, thereby saving the taxpayer £6,000,000 annually, the ghosts of Pitt, Townehend, North and Burke, to mention but a *gw, must have thought some strong things about the futility of history. And the shades of those Bostonians who so successfully, if not very politely, gave their famous tea party must have looked benignly on the / successors of their former Conservative enemies who to-day are giving another kind of tea party. Tea, in more ways than one, has played a great role in English affairs, and is still playing it. Aside from such historical events as the Boston Tea Party, in which, it must be confessed. Englishmen were made to sell their birthright for a brew of- tea, tea drinking, at once a stimulant and a diversion, has entered far more deeply into the national life.

It would be hard to say which is the more important to English people, tea or beer. The latter is entirely a home product, and from it many Englishmen doubtless derive their Tudor physique. To rescind a tax on beer would, no doubt, keep any government in power indefinitely, but it would Le too expensive. In rescinding the tax on tea the Conservative Government has hit upon an ideal "bribe," as former Chancellor "Philip Snowden calls it. Mr. Churchill does away with a tax that few people ever knew anything about, or, if they did, never gave it a second's thought; for a tax of 4d ' a pound is almost nothing on a cup of the steaming beverage. The Drink of High and Low. Throughout the length and breaath of England afternoon tea is a thoroughly established social and economic function.

It is with the working classes, however, that the volume of the nation-'s tea drinking can most accurately be gauged. With them it is tea for breakfast, tea for dinner, and tea for supper—not that soft brown orange pekoe colour, not that limpid discoloration of Indian tea. but that black-brown colour of tea that has been brewed as only a miner'" wife can brew it. Turning to the historical aspects oi tea, one discovers that the Emperor Chinnung of China is said to have extolled its merits as far back as 2737 B.C. There is but slender proof of this piece of celestial wisdom, but there is said to be dubious reference to tea by Confucius in the 500's B.C. However, no one disputes, for obvious reasons, that tea originally came from China, and a great deal of it still does. Scholars regret the fact that Marco Polo made no mention of it on his return from his miraculous visit to Far Cathay.

So far as is knpwn, it was never heard of in Europe until 1588, and the earliest mention of it in England is in 1615. But the English did not begin to use it, extensively until about 50 years later. Thus we find a reference in Pepys' Diary, under the date of 1060: "I did send for a cup of tee, a China drink, of which I never had drunk before." By x he middle of the next century tea had become a popular beverage.

Tea drinking had become almosti universal in England in the day of Johnison and was sold in almost every coffee

house. Wβ find the learned doctor taking up the cudgels in the defence of tea. with a Mr. Hanway, in answer to the latter's derogatory "Essay on Tea." We discover him staying up to all hours of the night to drink tea. with Miss Williams. And we find Boswell referring to tea as "that elegant and popular beverage." And bo tea becomes more and more the bulwark of the English social system.

Politically iea has never figured largely in the domestic history of England. It was subject from its earliest days to a general tax on beverages sold by the coffee houses. But tea figured largely and grandly in the relations of England with the American Colonies, as every American echoolboy knows. A gentleman by the name of Charles Townshend, being duly appointed as His Majesty King George llL's Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer, imposed a number of duties, one of which was on tea. There followed a determination not to pay the new taxes and riots broke out in Boston in 1770. This is the first bloodshed that tea is known to have caused. Lord North, Townshend's successor, had a grand plan to placate the Colonists and he accordingly rescinded all the new taxes except that on tea. What followed is perhaps best told, for those who have forgotten their history books, by that eminent historian John Fisker. The Famous Tea Party. "On the morning of Thursday, December 10, the assembly which was gathered in the Old South-Meeting House and in the street's about it numbered more than 7000 people. It was one' of the most momentous days in the history of the world. . . . 'Who knows/ said John Eowe, 'how tea will mingle with salt water?' And great applause followed the suggestion. . . . Determined not to act until the last legal method of relief should have been tried and found wanting, the great assembly was still waiting quietly in and about the church when, an hour after nightfall, Kotch returned from Milton with the Governor's refusal (to allow those ships to clear the harbour without. landing the tea). Then, amid profound stillness, Samuel Adams arose and said, quietly but distinctly, 'This meeting can do nothing more to save the country.' "It was the declaration of war; the law had shown itself unequal to the joccasjpn, and nothing now remained but a direct appeal to force. Scarcely had the watchword left his mouth when a war whoop answered from outside the door, and 50 men in the guise of Mohawk Indians passed quickly by the entrance, and hastened to Griffin's wharf. Before the 9 o'clock bell rang, the 342 chests of tea laden upon the three ships had been cut open, and their contents emptied into the sea. . . .

"Next morning the salted tea, as driven by wind and wave, lay in long rows on Dorchester beach, while Paul Revere, booted and spurred, was riding post-haste to Philadelphia, with the glorious news that Boston had at last thrown down the gauntlet for the King of England to pick up." But revolution or no revolution, tea drinking'" goes on, while colonies grow,, into a mighty republic. And, ironically enough, the same tax which the Tories of another day sought to impose upon the Colonies, has now been repealed by the Tories of our own day.