ted, closing the port of
Boston, abrogating the charter of Massachusetts Bay, etc., etc., were
all part of a premeditated design and system to introduce arbitrary
government into the colonies; that the sudden and repeated
dissolutions of Assemblies whenever they presumed to examine the
illegality of ministerial mandates, or deliberated on the violated
rights of their constituents, were part of the same system, and
calculated and intended to drive the people of the colonies to a state
of desperation, and to dissolve the compact by which their ancestors
bound themselves and their posterity to remain dependent on the
British crown. The resolutions, furthermore, recommended the most
perfect union and co-operation among the colonies; solemn covenants
with respect to non-importation and non-intercourse, and a
renunciation of all dealings with any colony, town, or province that
should refuse to agree to the plan adopted by the General Congress.
They also recommended a dutiful petition and remonstrance from the
Congress to the king, asserting their constitutional rights and
privileges; lamenting the necessity of entering into measures that
might be displeasing; declaring their attachment to his person,
family, and government, and their desire to continue in dependence
upon Great Britain; beseeching him not to reduce his faithful subjects
of America to desperation, and to reflect that _from our sovereign
there can be but one appeal_.

The resolutions reported by the committee were adopted, and Washington
was chosen a delegate to represent the county at the General
Convention of the province, to be held at Williamsburg on the 1st of
August. [On the date appointed the convention assembled.] Washington
appeared on behalf of Fairfax County, and presented the resolutions,
already cited, as the sense of his constituents. He is said, by one
who was present, to have spoken in support of them in a strain of
uncommon eloquence. The Convention was six days in session.
Resolutions, in the same spirit with those passed in Fairfax County,
were adopted, and Peyton Randolph, Richard Henry Lee, George
Washington, Patrick Henry, Richard Bland, Benjamin Harrison, and
Edmund Pendleton, were appointed delegates, to represent the people of
Virginia in the General Congress.

General Gage from the time of taking command at Boston, had been
perplexed how to manage its inhabitants. Had they been hot-headed,
impulsive, and prone to paroxysm, his task w