The part where it was obvious then that picking a fight with England over taxes is not going to secure you a better economic outcome than either paying the taxes and grumbling or finding a new way to dodge them. If picking a war with a superpower makes you rich the Taliban should be rolling in the dough.
They wanted to give England the bird. The taxes were just the flimsy pretense. Pretty much all of them paid for it in opportunity cost at a bare minimum.
You're using an ambiguous pronoun reference. Who's picking the fight? I don't think it was so obvious that war would be the consequence.
If I'm a tea smuggler beating the competition by avoiding taxes and my competitor is granted an even better tax-avoidance method (an exemption), then I'm going to pick a fight. I still might find a different business, but I'd see how far I could push it, first.
They wanted to give England the bird. The taxes were just the flimsy pretense. Pretty much all of them paid for it in opportunity cost at a bare minimum.