ledging the receipt of your favor of
April 12th; and candor obliges me to add, that it has been somewhat
extended by an aversion to writing, as well as to calls on my memory
for facts so much obliterated from it by time, as to lessen my own
confidence in the traces which seem to remain. One of the enquiries in
your letter, however, may be answered without an appeal to the memory.
It is that respecting the question, Whether committees of correspondence
originated in Virginia, or Massachusetts? on which you suppose me to
have claimed it for Virginia; but certainly I have never made such
a claim. The idea, I suppose, has been taken up from what is said in
Wirt's history of Mr. Henry, page 87, and from an inexact attention
to its precise terms. It is there said, 'This House [of Burgesses,
of Virginia] had the merit of originating that powerful engine of
resistance, corresponding committees between the legislatures of the
different colonies.' That the fact, as here expressed, is true, your
letter bears witness, when it says, that the resolutions of Virginia,
for this purpose, were transmitted to the speakers of the different
assemblies, and by that of Massachusetts was laid, at the next session,
before that body, who appointed a committee for the specified
object: adding, 'Thus, in Massachusetts, there were two committees of
correspondence, one chosen by the people, the other appointed by the
House of Assembly; in the former, Massachusetts preceded Virginia; in
the latter, Virginia preceded Massachusetts.' To the origination of
committees for the interior correspondence between the counties and
towns of a state, I know of no claim on the part of Virginia; and
certainly none was ever made by myself. I perceive, however, one error,
into which memory had led me. Our committee for national correspondence
was appointed in March, '73, and I well remember, that going to
Williamsburg in the month of June following, Peyton Randolph, our
chairman, told me that messengers bearing despatches between the two
states had crossed each other by the way, that of Virginia carrying our
propositions for a committee of national correspondence, and that of
Massachusetts, bringing, as my memory suggested, a similar proposition.
But here I must have misremembered; and the resolutions brought us from
Massachusetts were probably those you mention of the town-meeting of
Boston, on the motion of Mr. Samuel Adams, appointing a committee 'to
state the righ