The British owned the East India Company. It was a state corporation, which is why the Parliament wanted to monopolize the tea trading using that company. The colonists were upset that the British were NOT taxing that tea and allowing only select merchants to sell it while all other tea was taxed. This is why many of the men of the founding generation warned against state corporations, like the Bank of the United States, and why they insisted that the Constitution did not give the central government the authority to charter such institutions (they were correct; this issue was even discussed in Phil in 1787 and was outright rejected by the delegates to the Convention).
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