For 140 years, Massachusetts had local authority over all tax issues, and the law had been respected that way. This is how it had been done under the original Plymouth charter, and after a re-org in 1686 revoked that charter which ended in a rebellion in Boston with the colonial governor captured, a new Massachusetts charter was issued in 1691.
Under this new charter, Parliament and the King of England had the right to "impose and levy proportionable and reasonable assessments, rates, and taxes upon the estates and persons" of Massachusetts as long as these new laws were "issued and disposed of by warrant under the hand of the Governor of [Massachusetts] with the advice and consent of the Council [i.e., the Massachusetts colonial legislature] for our service in the necessary defence and support of our Government of [Massachusetts] and the protection and preservation of the inhabitants there".
In other words, the only way that Parliament and the King could raise taxes on the people of Massachusetts was to get authorization from the Massachusetts government.
This is how it had worked for 140 years, and this is what the law said, as the colonists understood it. And this is how Parliament had respected it for those 140 years as well. But now after the French and Indian War, Parliament began passing a series of laws that were essentially backdoor ways to tax the Thirteen Colonies, including Massachusetts. These schemes got more and more convoluted, including the Stamp Act, the Sugar Act, and the Tea Act among them.
Since Massachusetts couldn't sue, they did what they could do which was petition the King. Parliament would back off, then pass something else which again violated the charter of Massachusetts, and Massachusetts would again have to petition the King. This began to escalate to the point that Parliament began to specifically target Massachusetts, which is what some of the Intolerable Acts were.
The Boston Port Act punished Massachusetts specifically because of their reaction to the illegal Tea Act. But more egregious than that was the Massachusetts Government Act, which revoked the Massachusetts charter and brought the colony under the authority of the King.
This completely undermined the basis of the rule of law in the Thirteen Colonies. Up until then, the laws were based on the colonial charters, which were contracts between the people of the respective colonies and the King.
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