sent
to their counties copies of the resolution adopted against the Boston
port bill, in order that it should be ratified by the people. Mr. Mason,
as other members probably did, directed that his elder children should
attend church on the day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer, in
mourning. The first of June was observed as set apart by the house of
burgesses. The same day being the time fixed for the discontinuance of
the use of tea, the ladies, before that day, sealed up their stock, with
a determination not to use it until the duty should be repealed, and
resolutions of sympathy and encouragement, and contributions of money
and provisions, were sent from Virginia for the relief of "our
distressed fellow-subjects of Boston."

In the midst of these excitements John Page, of Rosewell, was elected
president of the Society for the Advancement of Useful Knowledge.

In the latter part of June, Washington presided as moderator at a
meeting held in his own county, Fairfax, and he was made chairman of a
committee appointed to draught resolutions on the alarming state of
public affairs, to be reported at a future meeting. He about this time
warmly supported the patriotic measures, in a correspondence with his
neighbor and friend, Bryan Fairfax, who adhered to the Anglican side in
the dispute. On the twenty-fourth of August he wrote to him: "I could
wish, I own, that the dispute had been left to posterity to determine;
but the crisis is arrived when we must assert our rights, or submit to
every imposition that can be heaped upon us, till custom and use will
make us as tame and abject slaves as the blacks we rule over with such
arbitrary sway."

The Fairfax committee framed resolutions, intimating that a persistence
of the government in its measures of coercion would result of necessity
only in a resort to the arbitrament of arms. These resolutions were
adopted by a county meeting held on the eighteenth of July, and
Washington was elected a delegate to the convention which was about to
convene. This body met on the first day of August, (although Dunmore had
issued writs for a new assembly,) its object being to consider the state
and condition of the colony, and to appoint delegates to congress. A new
and more thorough non-importation association was organized. Peyton
Randolph, Richard Henry Lee, Washington, Henry, Bland, Benjamin
Harrison, Jr., of Berkley, and Pendleton, were appointed[575:A]
delegates to congress. Patrick