Resolved, That his Majesty's liege people of this ancient colony have enjoyed the right of being thus governed by their own Assembly in the article of taxes and internal police, and that the same have never been forfeited, or any other way yielded up, but have been constantly recognized by the King and people of Great Britain.
Resolved, Therefore, that the General Assembly of this colony, together with his Majesty or his substitutes, have, in their representative capacity, the only exclusive right and power to lay taxes and imposts upon the inhabitants of this colony; and that every attempt to vest such power in any other person or persons whatever than the General Assembly aforesaid, is illegal, unconstitutional, and unjust, and has a manifest tendency to destroy British as well as American liberty.
Resolved, That his Majesty's liege people, the inhabitants of this colony, are not bound to yield obedience to any law or ordinance whatever, designed to impose any taxation whatsoever upon them, other than the laws or ordinances of the General Assembly aforesaid.
Resolved, That any person who shall, by speaking or writing, assert or maintain that any person or persons, other than the General Assembly of this colony, have any right or power to impose or lay any taxation on the people here, shall be deemed an enemy to his Majesty's colony.
[The sixth and seventh resolutions point to forcible resistance, not merely to protest. This is the peculiarity which marks off this document from many others of the time. A few months later, that tone was common. Cf. b, below.]
b. An Association against the Stamp Act in a Virginia County, 1766
Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1761-1765, lxxii. These Resolutions were drawn by Richard Henry Lee.
[County] resolutions passed at Leedstown, on the 27th day of February 1766:
... We, who subscribe this paper, have associated, and do bind ourselves to each other, to God, and to our country, by the firmest ties that religion and virtue can frame, most sacredly and punctually to stand by, and with our lives and fortunes, to support, maintain, and defend each other in the observance and execution of these following articles....