Category:The able doctor, or America swallowing the bitter draught

(Description and comment from M.Dorothy George, 'Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum', V, 1935) >From the 'London Magazine', xliii. 184. The print illustrates a report of the debates on the Boston Port Bill: the text of the Bill is given in full because it is "of vast importance to the mercantile part of the nation and indeed to the whole British Empire", pp. 165-85. The Boston Port Bill became law on 31 Mar. (one of the "five intolerable acts") passed as a punishment for the 'Boston tea-party' (16 Dec. 1773): the port of Boston was closed and its rights transferred to Salem till compensation should be made for the destruction of the tea. Boston, of course, was not cannonaded, Gage was its military and civil governor and he closed the harbour in accordance with the Act on 1 June, see BMSat 5227, 5228, 5230, 5236. The "Boston petition" is presumably the petition of Americans in London to the House of Commons against the Boston Port Bill, 'Parl. Hist.', xvii. 1189-92. For other references to the tax on tea see BMSat 5232, 5282, 5490, 5491, 6190. For the 'Tea Party' see Van Tyne, 'Causes of the War of Independence', 1921, ch. xix. Reproduced in Bernard Fay's 'Franklin', 1929, p. 362, but incorrectly dated 1770.

A copy signed "P. Revere Sculp", was published in the 'Royal American Magazine', vol. i (June 1774), Stauffer, BMSat 2673. Reproduced, 'Propylden-Weltgeschichte', ed. W. Goetz, vi. 1931, p. 461, J. T. Adams, 'Hist, of the American People', 1933, p. 93.)