Economic coercion through non-importation, non-exportation, and non-consumption was the main weapon of the colonials. It had worked before, it was not to work in 1774. There was a growing resentment in Britain against the colonials' intransigence. Repeal of the Stamp Act and the Townshend duties had brought no respect from the colonists and no suggestions about how to relieve the financial pressures on British taxpayers. Whereas parliament had listened to the pleas from distressed London tobacco merchants and traders in 1766 and 1770, members of both houses were increasingly of the opinion that the earlier repeals were a mistake. The basic issue of constitutional supremacy had been avoided. Now it must be faced. Even before the Continental Congress had met, King George remarked to Lord North, "The die is cast, the Colonies must either submit or triumph; I do not wish to come to severer measures but we must not retreat." There is no evidence that British public opinion differed with him.
Most Englishmen, the king and most members of the commons among them, considered the raising of independent militia companies in New England and the enforcement of non-importation by the Virginia Associations to be acts of rebellion. When they learned about the Continental Association in late 1774, they were convinced sterner measures were called for. At its January 1775 session parliament defeated a late-hour plan of union offered by Chatham. This plan would have conferred limited dominion status on the American colonies, reasserted the fundamental power of the crown, and repealed all the colonial acts passed by parliament after 1763. A similar plan had been offered by Galloway to the First Continental Congress. Both failed. Lord North, while sympathetic to plans for easing tensions, offered a plan of reconciliation by which the colonists would grant annual amounts for imperial expenses in lieu of taxes, but he could find no solution which at the same time did not diminish the authority of parliament or force the colonists to accept some vague annual levy determined in Britain.
Believing New England was in a state of rebellion and that the embargoes were acts of treason, parliament in March 1775 passed the Restraining Act. New England commerce was restricted to Great Britain, Ireland, and the West Indies, excluded from the Newfoundland fisheries, and barred from coastal trading with other colonies until they ended their associations and complied with the Boston Port Act. When further testimony demonstrated that Virginia, South Carolina, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland were equally guilty of forming non-importation associations, they were added to the Restraining Act list.
Simultaneously, parliament passed North's plan for reconciliation which embodied the proposal for removing all parliamentary taxes if the colonial legislatures would provide alternative sources of revenue.
War
As parliament debated, events in America took matters out of the realm of abstract theory and put them into the context of practical revolution.
For Virginia the crucial decisions had been made by the Second Virginia Convention meeting on March 20, 1775 at St. John's Church, Richmond, far from Governor Dunmore's eyes in Williamsburg. Originally called to hear reports from the delegates to the First Continental Congress, to elect delegates to the Second Congress, and to review the operations of the association, the convention soon found itself embroiled in a call by Patrick Henry for sanctioning a Virginia colonial militia independent of the existing militia which was deemed too reliant on the governor. To Henry the situation was obvious. Time was fleeting. Increasing numbers of troops were in New England; a fleet was bound for New York; war was inevitable; Virginia must be protected. Rather ingeniously he argued that a well-armed Virginia militia would eliminate the need for a standing army of British regulars in the colonies. "A well regulated Militia, composed of gentlemen and yeoman is the only Security of a free Government." To Bland, Robert Carter Nicholas, and Edmund Pendleton it was too soon for an armed militia. Such an action would be a direct affront to the king. More to the point, they were concerned that the colony was yet too unprepared to meet the full force of British arms which would certainly be brought down upon Virginia for such an act of rebellion. Time was necessary to prepare for this warlike act.
Henry would hear none of it. On March 23 in perhaps his greatest speech, he swept up the reluctant delegates with his fervent cry: