as reflect upon His Majesty and the Parliament of Great Britain, which makes it necessary for me to dissolve you, and you are dissolved accordingly."

The members adjourned to the long room of the old Raleigh tavern, and passed resolutions denouncing the Boston port bill as a most dangerous attempt to destroy the constitutional liberty and rights of all North America; recommending their countrymen to desist from the use, not merely of tea, but of all kinds of East Indian commodities; pronouncing an attack on one of the colonies, to enforce arbitrary taxes, an attack on all.

The Committee of Correspondence was ordered to communicate with the other Corresponding Committees on the expediency of appointing deputies from the several colonies of British America, to meet annually in General Congress, at such place as might be deemed expedient, to deliberate on such measures as the united interest of the colonies might require.

This was the first recommendation of the General Congress by any public assembly, though it had been previously proposed in two meetings at New York and Boston.

A resolution to the same effect was passed in the Assembly of Massachusetts before it was aware of the proceedings of the Virginia Legislature.

The measure recommended met with prompt and general concurrence throughout the colonies, and the 5th day of September was fixed upon for the meeting of the first Congress, which was to be held at Philadelphia.

Washington was still at Williamsburg on the 1st of June when the port bill was to be enforced at Boston. It was ushered in by the tolling of bells and observed by all true patriots as a day of fasting and humiliation.

WASHINGTON FASTED ON THAT DAY.

Washington notes in his diary that he fasted rigidly and attended the services appointed in the church.

The harbor of Boston was closed at noon, and all business ceased. The two other parliamentary acts altering the charter of Massachusetts were also enforced.

No public meetings, except the annual town meetings in March and May, were to be held without permission of the Governor.

General Thomas Gage had recently been appointed to the military command of Massachusetts, and the carrying out of these offensive acts devolved upon him. He was the same officer who, as lieutenant-colonel, had led the advance guard on the field of Braddock's defeat.

Fortune had gone well with him. He had been Governor of Montreal, and had succeeded Amherst in the command of the British forces on this continent. He was linked to the North American country also by domestic ties, having married into one of the most respectable families of New Jersey. With all his experience in America, he had formed a most erroneous opinion of the character of the people.

"The Americans," said he to the King, "will be lions only as long as the English are lambs;" and he engaged, with five regiments, to keep Boston quiet!

The manner in which his attempts to enforce the recent acts of Parliament were resented showed how egregiously he was in error.

At the suggestion of the Massachusetts Assembly a paper was circulated through the province by the Committee of Correspondence entitled "A Solemn League and Covenant," the subscribers to which bound themselves to break off all intercourse with Great Britain from the 1st of August until the colony should be restored to the enjoyment of its chartered rights, and to renounce all dealings with those who should refuse to enter into this compact.

This title of "League and Covenant" had an ominous sound, and startled Gage, and he issued a proclamation, denouncing it as illegal and traitorous. Furthermore, he encamped a force of infantry and artillery on Boston Common, and alarm spread through the adjacent country.

"Boston is to be blockaded! Boston is to be reduced to obedience by force or famine!"

The spirit of the people was aroused. They sent in word to the inhabitants of Boston promising to come to their aid if necessary, and urging them to stand fast to the faith.

At a convention of the representative men of Fairfax County, Province of Virginia, held on the 18th of July, previous to the assembling of the First Continental Congress, Washington was made chairman of the committee appointed.

WASHINGTON SOUNDS TOCSIN OF LIBERTY.

The resolutions framed insisted upon the right of self-government, and the principle that taxation and representation were in their nature inseparable, and asserted that the various acts of Parliament for raising revenue, taking away trials by jury, ordering that persons might be tried in a different

county from that in which the cause of accusation originated, closing the port of Boston, abrogating the charter of Massachusetts Bay, were all part of a premeditated design and system to introduce arbitrary government into the colonies.

The resolutions also declared that the sudden and repeated dissolutions of Assemblies whenever they presumed to examine the illegality of ministerial mandates, or deliberated upon 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.

These resolutions are the more worthy of note, as they were expressive of the opinions and feelings of Washington at that eventful time, being entirely dictated by him.

The resolutions were adopted, and Washington was chosen a delegate to the General Convention of the province, to be held at Williamsburg on the 1st of August.

Washington, on behalf of Fairfax County, presented the resolutions as the sense of his constituents, and spoke in support of them in a strain of uncommon eloquence.

This showed his latent ardor had been excited by the occasion, as eloquence was not in general among his attributes.

It is evident, however, that he was aroused to an unusual pitch of enthusiasm, for he declared he was ready to raise one thousand men, subsist them at his own expense and march at their head to the relief of Boston.

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.

Washington had formed a correct opinion of the position of General

Gage.

From the time of taking command at Boston, Gage had been perplexed how to manage its inhabitants.

Had they been hot-headed, impulsive and prone to paroxysm, his task would have been comparatively easy; but it was the cool, shrewd common. sense, by which all their movements were regulated, that confounded him.

HIGH-HANDED MEASURES HAD FAILED.

High-handed measures had failed of the anticipated effect. Their harbor had been thronged with ships; their town with troops.

The port bill had put an end to commerce; wharves were deserted, warehouses closed, streets grass-grown and silent. The rich were growing poor and the poor were without employ; yet the spirit of the people was unbroken. There was no uproar, however; no riots; everything was awfully systematic and according to rule.

Town meetings were held, in which public rights and public measures were eloquently discussed by John Adams, Josiah Quincy and other eminent

men.

Over these meetings Samuel Adams presided as a moderator; a man clear in judgment, calm in conduct, inflexible in resolution; deeply grounded in civil and political history, and all but infallible on all points of constitutional law.

Alarmed at the powerful influence of these assemblages, government issued an act prohibiting them after the 1st of August.

The act was evaded by convoking the meetings before the day and keeping them alive indefinitely.

Gage was at a loss how to act. It would not do to disperse these assemblages by force of arms, for the people who composed them mingled the soldier with the polemic; and, like their prototypes, the covenanters of yore, if prone to argue, were as ready to fight.

So the meetings continued to be held pertinaciously. Faneuil Hall was at times unable to hold them, and they swarmed from that revolutionary hive into old South Church.

The liberty tree became a rallying place .or any popular movement, and a flag hoisted on it was saluted by all processions as the emblem of the popular cause.

Opposition to the new plan of government assumed a more violent aspect at the extremity of the Province, and was abetted by Connecticut.

"It is very high," wrote Gage (August 26th), “in Berkshire County, and makes way rapidly to the rest.

"At Worcester they threaten resistance, purchase arms, provide powder, cast balls and threaten to attack any troops who may oppose them. I apprehend I shall soon have to march troops into that township."

MEETING OF THE FIRST CONTINENTAL CONGRESS.

What was designated as the First Colonial Congress had been held on October 7th, 1765, at New York, nine colonies sending twenty-eight delegates, but practically nothing came of it.

The First Continental Congress, which assembled at Philadelphia, on the 5th of September, 1774, was composed of fifty-one delegates, every colony being represented except Georgia.

Carpenter's Hall was the place of meeting, and the first public measure of the Congress was a resolution declaratory of their feelings with regard to the recent acts of Parliament, violating the rights of the people of Massachusetts and of their determination to combine in resisting any force that might attempt to carry those acts into execution.

A committee of two from each Province reported a series of resolutions, which were adopted and promulgated by Congress, as a "declaration of colonial rights."

In this were enumerated their natural rights to the enjoyment of life, liberty and property, and their rights as British subjects.

Among the latter was participation in legislative councils. This they could not exercise through representatives in Parliament; they claimed, therefore, the power of legislating in their provincial assemblies, consenting to such acts of Parliament as might be essential to the regulation of trade, but excluding all taxation, internal or external, for raising revenue in America.

The common law of England was claimed as a birthright, including the right of trial by a jury of the vicinage, of holding public meetings to consider grievances and of petitioning the King.

The benefits of all such statutes as existed at the time of the colonization were likewise claimed, together with the immunities and privileges granted by royal charters or secured by provincial laws.

The maintenance of a standing army in any colony in time of peace, without the consent of its Legislature, was pronounced contrary to law.

The exercise of the legislative power in the colonies by a council, appointed during pleasure by the Crown, was declared to be unconstitutional and destructive to the freedom of American legislation.

Then followed a specification of the acts of Parliament, passed during the reign of George III., infringing and violating these rights

These were the sugar act, the stamp act, the two acts for quartering.