“It is important to understand that the Tea Act actually placed no new tax on tea. Instead it simply gave a tax break to the East India Tea company.
“With the existing tax still on the books from the Townshend Duties, East India Tea company was losing money because its legitimately imported tea could not compete with the tea being illegally smuggled by the colonial merchants. Obviously the British government preferred to help the struggling East India Co. than to see colonial smugglers profiting and using their newly gained financial power to sponsor anti-British protests.
Boston Tea Party - Tea Act, 1773
“The new measure was also supposed to win the minds of tea consumers in America by driving down the market price of tea. But in the situation already aggravated by the previous heavy-handed tax measures, this obvious economic benefit was overlooked by the population and the new law was regarded at ‘Taxation without representation’.”
Anyway, what does “10/- per lb” mean?
Dunno.
It stands for 10 shillings per pound
If you need to know what a shilling is I believe it was a coin equal to 12 pence.