Prime Minister Lord North.
The Coercive Acts, known in the American colonies as the Intolerable Acts, were a series of acts of the Parliament of Great Britain passed in the spring of 1774 to punish the province of Massachusetts for the destruction of 92,000 pounds of tea worth £9,659 in the Boston Tea Party of 16 December 1773. The Coercive Acts set in motion the final confrontation between Britain and the American colonies of the American Crisis.
News of the Boston Tea Party reached Great Britain in January 1774. In Britain, even those politicians considered friends of the colonies were appalled at the destruction of property and this act united all parties there against the colonies. Prime Minister Lord North said, "Whatever may be the consequence, we must risk something; if we do not, all is over." The Coercive Acts were:
- The Boston Port Act of 31 March 1774, which outlawed the use of the Port of Boston by setting up a barricade, and diverted all commerce from Boston to the town of Marblehead. The Boston Port Act took effect on 1 June 1774 and would be in effect until restitution was made to the King's treasury for customs duty lost and to the British East India Company for damages suffered;
- The Massachusetts Government Act of 20 May 1774, which abrogated the 1691 charter of Massachusetts Bay by ending the elective nature of several offices, including the upper house of the Massachusetts legislature, and making them appointive by the Royal Governor. The act also outlawed town meetings without the governor's consent. Lord North explained that the purpose of the act was "to take the executive power from the hands of the democratic part of government;"
- The Administration of Justice Act of 20 May 1774, which allowed the Royal Governor of any province in America to change the venue of trials involving government officials; and
- The Quartering Act of 2 June 1774, which allowed the Royal Governor of any province in America to house soldiers in any unoccupied building if the province's legislature did not provide sufficient buildings.
- The Quebec Act of 22 June 1774 was a fifth act passed by the same session of Parliament, which enlarged the province of Quebec to include the Ohio Valley, and granted additional rights to Quebec's Roman Catholic residents. Although Lord North had not intended the Quebec Act to be part of the Coercive Acts, it was interpreted that way by the American colonists.
Instead of isolating Massachusetts from the other colonies, the Coercive Acts drew all of the colonies closer together. The Boston Port Act's attack on the livelihoods of the people of Massachusetts caused colonies as far away as South Carolina to send relief supplies there. The Massachusetts Government Act's abrogation of that colony's charter represented a threat to every colony's self-government, and the fact that the Administration of Justice Act and the Quartering Act applied to all the colonies also served to bring them closer together.
Like the Stamp Act nine years before, passage of the Coercive Acts led the colonists to hold an extra-legal intercolonial meeting of delegates called the Continental Congress in September 1774. The Congress established an economic embargo of British goods called the Continental Association, and created extra-legal bodies called Committees of Inspection to enforce the embargo. By provoking the American colonies into drawing together and defying Parliament's authority, the Coercive Acts all but guaranteed the eventual outbreak of the North American Rebellion.