of New England. Founded at an
earlier period of the reign of James I., before kingly prerogative and
ecclesiastical supremacy had been made matters of doubt and fierce
dispute, it had grown up in loyal attachment to king, church, and
constitution; was aristocratical in its tastes and habits, and had
been remarked above all the other colonies for its sympathies with the
mother country. Moreover, it had not so many pecuniary interests
involved in these questions as had the people of New England, being an
agricultural rather than a commercial province; but the Virginians are
of a quick and generous spirit, readily aroused on all points of
honorable pride, and they resented the stamp act as an outrage on
their rights.

Washington occupied his seat in the House of Burgesses, when, on the
29th of May, the stamp act became a subject of discussion. Among the
Burgesses sat Patrick Henry, a young lawyer who had recently
distinguished himself by pleading against the exercise of the royal
prerogative in church matters, and who was now for the first time a
member of the House. Rising in his place, he introduced his celebrated
resolutions, declaring that the General Assembly of Virginia had the
exclusive right and power to lay taxes and impositions upon the
inhabitants, and that whoever maintained the contrary should be deemed
an enemy to the colony. The speaker, Mr. Robinson, objected to the
resolutions, as inflammatory. Henry vindicated them, as justified by
the nature of the case; went into an able and constitutional
discussion of colonial rights, and an eloquent exposition of the
manner in which they had been assailed.

The resolutions were modified, to accommodate them to the scruples of
the speaker and some of the members, but their spirit was retained.
The Lieutenant-governor (Fauquier), startled by this patriotic
outbreak, dissolved the Assembly, and issued writs for a new election;
but the clarion had sounded.

Washington returned to Mount Vernon full of anxious thoughts inspired
by the political events of the day, and the legislative scene which he
witnessed. His recent letters had spoken of the state of peaceful
tranquillity in which he was living; those now written from his rural
home show that he fully participated in the popular feeling, and that
while he had a presentiment of an arduous struggle, his patriotic mind
was revolving means of coping with it. In the meantime, from his quiet
abode at Mount Vernon, he see