1 and the option to the Province between sub-
mission and the forfeiture of their rights.
2 ‘I wish,’ said he, ‘Government may be convinced that something is necessary to be done.’
‘We want a full persuasion that Parliament will maintain its Supremacy at all events.’
‘Without it, the opposition here will triumph more than ever.’
The people on their part drew from their institu-
tion of Committees of Correspondence throughout the Province, the hope of a union of all the Colonies.
‘Some future Congress,’ said they, ‘will be the glorious source of the salvation of
America; the Amphictyons of
Greece, who formed the Diet or great Council of the States, exhibit an excellent model for the rising
Americans.’
3
Whether that great idea should become a reality depended on
Virginia.
Its Legislature came together on the fourth of March, full of the love of country.
Its Members had authentic information of the proceedings of the town of
Boston; and public rumors had reached them of the Commission for inquiry into the affairs of
Rhode Island.
They had read and approved of the answers which the Council and the
House of
Massachusetts had made in January to the speech of
Hutchinson.
They formed themselves, therefore, into a Committee of the whole House on the state of the Colony; and in that Committee
Dabney Carr, of
Charlotte, a young statesman of brilliant genius as well as of fervid patriotism, moved a series of resolutions for a system of intercolonial