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146 The year of his coming was marked by the secret destruction of the revenue-schooner Gaspé in Rhode Island, and by many significant flaws of temper here and there throughout the colonies; and 1773 saw affairs at last come to a crisis.

Dunmore had summoned the Burgesses to meet him upon his first coming, but had liked their proud temper as little as they liked his, and was careful not to call them together again till March, 1773, though he had promised to convene them earlier. There was instant trouble. In view of the affair of the Gaspé, Parliament had again resolved upon the trial of malcontents in England, and the Burgesses were hot at seeing the sentiments of the colonies so flouted. Conservative men would still have waited to try events, but their fellow-members of quicker pulse were diligent to disappoint them. Leadership fell to those who were bold enough to take it; and Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, Dabney Carr, and Thomas Jefferson, radicals all, drew together, a self-constituted committee of guidance. Evening after evening they met in a private room at the Raleigh, with now and again one or two other like spirits called into counsel, to consult what should be done. Richard Henry Lee proposed that the colonies should be invited to join Virginia in appointing committees of correspondence, through which to devise steady concert of action, and that Virginia's committee, to be appointed at once, should be instructed to look into the character of the new court of trial lately established in Rhode Island. Dabney Carr was directed to move the resolutions, and the eloquence of Lee and Henry won for them an instant and hearty acceptance. Dunmore promptly dissolved the Assembly, and Wash-