[The Reverend Mr. Thomas Smith, having been appointed Moderator], Several papers containing the Proceedings of the late House of Burgesses of this Colony, and the subsequent determinations of the late Representatives after the House was dissolved, together with extracts of several Resolves of the Provinces of Massachusetts Bay, Maryland, etc., being read, the meeting proceeded seriously to consider the present dangerous and truly alarming crisis, when ruin is threatened to the ancient constitutional rights of North America, and came to the following Resolves:
7th. This meeting do heartily concur with the late Representative body of this country, to disuse tea, and not purchase any other commodity of the East Indies, except saltpetre, until the grievances of America are redressed. (Cf. No. 125 e, above.)
8th. We do most heartily concur in these preceding Resolves, and will, to the utmost of our power, take care that they are carried into execution; and that we will regard every man as infamous who now agree to, and shall hereafter make a breach of all or any of them; subject however to such future alterations as shall be judged expedient, at a general meeting of Deputies from the several parts of this Colony, or a general Congress of all the Colonies.
9th. We do appoint Richard Henry Lee, and Richard Lee, Esquires, the late Representatives of this county, to attend the general meeting of Deputies from all the counties [August 1]; and we desire that they do exert their best abilities to get these, our earnest desires for the security of public liberty, assented to.
10th. And as it may happen that the Assembly now called to meet on the 11th of August, may be prorogued to a future day, and many of the Deputies appointed to meet on the 1st of August, trusting to the certainty of meeting in Assembly on the 11th may fail to attend on the first, by which means decisive injury may arise to the common cause of liberty, by the general sense of the country not being early known at this dangerous crisis of American freedom, we do, therefore, direct that our Deputies now chosen fail not to attend at Williamsburg, on the said 1st of August; and it is our earnest wish that the Deputies from other counties be directed to do the same, for the reasons above assigned.
[Other counties responded to this wish. Thus, seven days later, a "respectable meeting of Freeholders and Freemen of the County of Richmond," called to choose and instruct delegates to the August Convention, did so with the following caution:
"8th. This meeting do appoint Robert Wormeley Carter and Francis L. Lee, gentlemen, as their Deputies for the purposes afore said; and they do request them that they fail not to attend in Williamsburg on the said first day of August, and do not trust to meeting in Assembly on the 11th ... as it is in the power of Government either to prorogue the Assembly to a future day, or dissolve the same,—by which means the sense of this Colony may not be known." (Force, IV, 1, 492, 493.)]