Henry and Richard Henry Lee were listened
to with delight, and Washington said, "I will raise one thousand men,
subsist them at my own expense, and march myself at their head for the
relief of Boston."[575:B]

Mr. Jefferson was elected a member of this convention, but was prevented
from attending by the state of his health. In the interval before the
meeting he prepared instructions for the Virginia delegates in congress,
in which he assumed the ground that the British parliament had no right
whatever to exercise any authority over the colony of Virginia. These
instructions being communicated through the president of the convention,
Peyton Randolph, were generally read and approved of by many, though
considered too bold for the present. But they printed them in a
pamphlet, under the title of "A Summary View of the Rights of British
America."[575:C] The following excerpts are taken from it: "History has
informed us that bodies of men as well as individuals are susceptible of
the spirit of tyranny." "Scarcely have our minds been able to emerge
from the astonishment into which one stroke of parliamentary thunder has
involved us before another more heavy and more alarming is fallen on
us." "The great principles of right and wrong are legible to every
reader; to pursue them requires not the aid of many counsellors. The
whole art of government consists in the art of being honest; only aim to
do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail. No longer
persevere in sacrificing the rights of one part of the empire to the
inordinate desires of another, but deal out to all equal and impartial
right. Let no act be passed by any one legislature which may infringe on
the rights and liberties of another." "Accept of every commercial
preference it is in our power to give for such things as we can raise
for their use, or they make for ours. But let them not think to exclude
us from going to other markets to dispose of those commodities which
they cannot use, or to supply those wants which they cannot supply."

On the subject of slavery Mr. Jefferson used the following language:
"The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in
these colonies, where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state.
But previous to the enfranchisement of the slaves we have, it is
necessary to exclude all further importations from Africa, yet our
repeated attempts to effect this, by prohibitions, and by imposing
duties whic