Without having some say in the government, the people of Massachusetts wouldn’t be as able to resist British authority — at least, that was the idea. The common people were causing too many problems, and they shouldn’t be allowed to meddle in politics. Obviously, the situation in Massachusetts was out of control, and some action had to be taken to discipline the unruly colonists and bring them back under British control.
Those were some of the reasons why the British Parliament passed a law in May 1774 to change the structure of government in Massachusetts. This was another of the “Intolerable Acts” which came as a reaction to the Boston Tea Party. Up to this point, the colony’s government had operated on the basis of a charter granted by the King in 1691; now the charter was repealed and a new form of government was introduced.
For one thing, the Massachusetts Council would be appointed by the governor rather than elected by the House of Representatives. Since the governor himself was appointed by the King, this ensured that the council members would be supporters of British policies. The governor was also given control over the town meetings. And the governor who had been appointed around this time was Thomas Gage, a British general.
Lord George German, the British Secretary of State for the Colonies, had no patience with the common people of Massachusetts being involved in their own government:
I would not have men of a mercantile cast every day collecting themselves together and debating about political matters; I would have them follow their occupations as merchants, and not consider themselves as ministers of that country. … You have, Sir, no government, no governor; the whole are the proceedings of a tumultuous and riotous rabble, who ought, if they had the least prudence, to follow their mercantile employment and not trouble themselves with politics and government, which they do not understand.
Germain was a haughty man, accustomed to being in authority and being obeyed, but he wasn’t exactly alone in his point of view (and we can’t say that his view has died out in our time, either). Many members of Parliament agreed that the colony’s government should be run primarily by those who took their side. They had no intention of letting the colonists get out of their control any more.
Source: The Spirit of ‘Seventy-Six: The Story of the American Revolution as Told by Participants. Bicentennial Edition. Page 13.