The colonists declared that it altered, by parliamentary fiat, the basic structure of colonial government, and vowed to block its implementation.

In the wake of the Boston Tea Party, the British Parliament launched a legislative offensive against Massachusetts to control its errant behavior.

On May 2, 1774, Lord North, speaking as the head of the ministry, called on Parliament to adopt the Act on the grounds that the whole colony was "in a distempered state of disturbance and opposition to the laws of the mother country.

The Act provided that local officials were no longer to be elected: Most important was the provision regarding town meetings, the key instrument of local rule: When Governor Thomas Gage invoked the act in October 1774 to dissolve the provincial assembly, its Patriot leaders responded by setting up an alternative government that actually controlled everything outside Boston.

They argued that the new act had nullified the contract between the king and the people, who ignored Gage's order for new elections and set up the Massachusetts Provincial Congress.