ady been proposed in town meetings, both
in New York and Boston. The colonies, from New Hampshire to South
Carolina inclusive, adopted this measure; and where the Legislatures
were not in session, elections were made by the people.[339]

While there was a general agreement of sentiment throughout the colonies
in favour of a Congress or Convention of all the colonies to consult on
common rights and interests, and to devise the best means of securing
them, there was also a corresponding sympathy and liberality for the
relief of the inhabitants of Boston, who were considered as suffering
for the maintenance of rights sacred to the liberties of all the
colonies, as all had resisted successfully the landing of the tea, the
badge of their enslavement, though all had not been driven by the
Governor, as in the case of Massachusetts, to destroy it in order to
prevent its being landed. Yet even this had been done to some extent
both in South Carolina and New York.

The town of Boston became an object of interest, and its inhabitants
subjects of sympathy throughout the colonies of America. All the
histories of those times agree "that as soon as the true character of
the Boston Port Act became known in America, every colony, every city,
every village, and, as it were, the inmates of every farm-house, felt
it as a wound of their affections. The towns of Massachusetts abounded
in kind offices. The colonies vied with each other in liberality. The
record kept at Boston shows that 'the patriotic and generous people' of
South Carolina were the first to minister to the sufferers, sending
early in June two hundred barrels of rice, and promising eight hundred
more. At Wilmington, North Carolina, the sum of two thousand pounds
currency was raised in a few days; the women of the place gave
liberally. Throughout all New England the towns sent rye, flour, peas,
cattle, sheep, oil, fish; whatever the land or hook and line could
furnish, and sometimes gifts of money. The French inhabitants of Quebec,
joining with those of English origin, shipped a thousand and forty
bushels of wheat. Delaware was so much in earnest that it devised plans
for sending relief annually. All Maryland and all Virginia were
contributing liberally and cheerfully, being resolved that the men of
Boston, who were deprived of their daily labour, should not lose their
daily bread, nor be compelled to change their residence for want. In
Fairfax county, Washington presided at a