We’ve mentioned a few times that boycotts and import restrictions didn’t have a huge impact on the British economy. After all, the British Empire was huge and America just didn’t have the financial clout to make such things hurt.

The real issue, many Britons thought, was that America had the impudence to act at all. How dare these mere colonists think that they can behave in such a dreadful manner, what with the wasting of the tea and circumventing our governors? Stuff like that, you know?

And it was because of that attitude that many people in Parliament weren’t so much interested in reconciliation as they were interested in punishment. But America had gotten used to being so far from Britain, and the harder that England held on, the more America just slipped out of the grasp, like trying to hold a fistful of sand.

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