Nimmo, 1887).Ĥ-: From Volume II of The Flowers of Wit, or a Choice Collection of Bon Mots, both Antient and Modern with Biographical and Critical Remarks (London: Printed for Lackington, Allen, and Co., 1814), by the English clergyman, college teacher and writer Henry Kett (1761-1825):Ī person came running almost breathless to lord chancellor Thurlow. Burke 1 once compared a similar rising to a storm in a tea-pot.ġ This most probably refers to the British man of letters and Whig politician Edmund Burke (1729-1797) however, I have searched in vain for this phrase in Burke’s writings, in particular in the twelve volumes of The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke (London: J.
The Jamaica Assembly puts on the appearance of great wrath on account of the abolition of the Slave Trade, and seem to threaten us with very serious commotions. For example, the following woodcut shows a steaming urn about to explode it is from Tome 1 of Essais historiques et politiques sur les Anglo-Américains (Bruxelles, 1781), by the French lawyer and historian Michel-René Hilliard d’Auberteuil (1751-1789):ģ-: From The Morning Chronicle (London, England) of Saturday 16 th January 1808: In fact, the War of American Independence was often symbolised by steaming teapots and smoking bombs. At the base of the print are two pictures in ovals comparing the War of American Independence to Holland’s auto-da-fé (1560) and Switzerland’s William Tell (1200)-image: Library of Congress: Figures representing world opinion look on: a Native-American man (America), a black woman (Africa), a woman holding a lantern (Asia), and a woman holding shield and spear (Europe). This print depicts Father Time using a magic lantern to project the image of a teapot exploding among frightened British troops as American troops advance through the smoke. This use of the phrase was in turn apparently satirised by The Tea-Tax Tempest, or the Anglo-American Revolution (: s.n., 1778), the title of a print attributed to the German engraver Carl Guttenberg (1743-1790) the title also appears in German, as Ungewitter entstanden durch die Auflage auf den Thee in Amerika, and in French, as Orage causé par l’Impôt sur le Thé en Amérique. It has unfortunately, by the Bluster of a North-Easter, been swelled into a Hurricane that has threatened the Submersion of a whole Country.Ģ-: The phrase, therefore, seems to have first been used to minimise the importance of the War of American Independence. When the Commotion first began in the Western World, to any Thing of a Statesman it would have been nothing more than a Storm in a Tea-cup that could hardly have drowned a Fly. The following are the earliest occurrences that I have found, in chronological order:ġ-: The phrase occurs as part of an extended metaphor in a letter by a person signing themself ‘A Briton’, published in The Public Advertiser (London, England) of Saturday 16 th September 1775 (“ the present Embroil in America” designates the War of American Independence (1775-1783), initiated by the Boston Tea Party of 1773, when the tea was thrown overboard from the ships in Boston harbour as a protest against the taxation of the American colonies by the British Government):Ĭome we now to surely not an uninteresting Question relative to the present Embroil in America. The phrase a storm, or a tempest, in a teacup, or in a teapot, and variants, denote a great commotion in a circumscribed circle, or about a matter of small or only local importance.
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