Page:Sketches of the life and character of Patrick Henry.djvu/120

 96 SKETCHES OF THE

upon his majesty and the parhament of Great Britain, which makes it necessary to dissolve you, and you are dissolved accordingly."

The members immediately withdrew to the Raleigh tavern, where they formed themselves into a committee to consider of the most expedient and necessary mea- sures to guard against the encroachments which so glaringly threatened them ; and immediately adopted the following spirited association.

" An association, signed by 89 members of the late house of burgesses. We, his majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the late representatives of the good people of this country, having been deprived, by the sudden in- terposition of the executive part of this government, from giving our countiymen the advice we wished to convey to them, in a legislative capacity, find ourselves under the hard necessity of adopting this, the only me- thod we have left, of pointing out to our countrymen, such measures as, in our opinion, are best fitted to secure our dear rights and liberty from destruction, by the heavy hand of power now lifted against North America. With much grief, we find that our dutiful applications to Great Britain for the security of our just, ancient, and constitutional rights, have been not only disregarded, but that a determined system is formed and pressed, for reducing the inhabitants of British America to slavery, by subjecting them to the payment of taxes, imposed without the consent of the people or their re- presentatives; and that, in pursuit of this system, we find an act of the British parliament, lately passed, for stopping the harbour and commerce of the town of Boston, in our sister colony of Massachusetts Bay, until the people there submit to the payment of such unconstitutional taxes; and which act most violently

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