By John Zmirak, The Stream - On December 16, 1773, a small group of radicals in Boston broke the law. By dumping British tea into Boston Harbor, they defied the will of their long-standing government, violated property rights, and provoked a savage reaction by their rulers... Their motive? To stop the “tyrannical” British East India Company from imposing the kind of slavery on the Colonies that it had already imposed across India. The impact of this attack? A new set of harshly coercive laws imposed by the British Parliament.