Almost at the same time as the Boston Massacre, the Townsend Duties on all goods, except tea, were repealed. The colonists were huge consumers of tea, drinking two million cups a day. To avoid paying this last import duty on tea, Americans drank smuggled Dutch tea. Their refusal to touch the tea shipped by Britain's East India Company contributed to the decline of this important chartered trading company. To try to save the company, the government gave it special permission to ship tea directly to America from India, cutting out the "middlemen" in Britain.
