I'll discharge all their dues with the rebel estates;
In less than three months I shall send a polacca
As deep as she'll swim, sir, with corn and tobacco."
"Dialogue between Lords Mansfield and Dunmore," by Philip Freneau.
URING the progress of more than a century and a quarter, the Virginians had fully appreciated the principles of civil freedom, and particularly that great truth that government possesses no inherent right to tax the people without their consent. At various times, the Virginia Assembly had resisted the attempts of Parliament to levy taxes upon them; and when, in 1764, the Stamp Act was proposed by ministers, they resolved never to submit to it. The following year 1765 that act became a law. The Virginia House of Burgesses were in session, in the old capital at Williamsburg, when intelligence of the fact reached them. They talked boldly in private, but none were willing to act bravely in public, until near the close of the session, when Patrick Henry, the youngest member of the Assembly, and seated there for the first time only a few days before, took the lead. He had already led the Democratic members successfully against a paper-money scheme, the prime object of which was to cover up defalcations of Robinson, the treasurer of the colony. Now he exerted his powers in a broader field. Upon a scrap of paper torn from a fly-leaf of an old copy of "Coke upon Lyttleton," he wrote five resolutions, and submitted them to the House. The first declared that the original settlers of the colonies brought with them and transmitted to their posterity all the privileges, franchises, and Immunities, enjoyed by the people of Great Britain. The second affirmed that these privileges, &c., had been secured to the aforesaid colonists by two royal charters granted by King James. The third asserted that taxation of the people by themselves, or by persons chosen by themselves, was the distinguishing characteristic of British freedom, and without which the ancient Constitution could not exist. The fourth maintained that the people of Virginia had always enjoyed the right of being governed by their own Assembly in the article of taxes, and that this right had been constantly recognized by the king and people of Great Britain. The fifth
* This refers to the fact that Dunmore was a great spendthrift, and always in debt. Such, in truth, was the case of a large proportion of the English nobility, at that time, who were engaged in public affairs, notwithstanding their large incomes. Mansfield here named, was the celebrated chief justice, who, because he gave the weight of his legal opinions, and the services of his pen against the colonists while struggling for independence, became very obnoxious to the Americans.
Effect of Henry's Resolutions.—Eloquence and Skill of the Orator.—Dissolution of the Assembly.—General Congress proposed.