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sachusetts preceded Virginia; in the latter, Virginia preceded Massachusetts.’ To the origination of committees for the imterior correspondence between the counties and towns of a state, 1 know of no claim on the part of Virginia; and certainly none was ever made by myself. 1 perceive, however, one error, into which memory had led me. Our committee for national correspondence, was appointed in March, 773, and I well remember, that going to Williamsburg, in the month of June following, Peyton Randolph, our chairman, told me that messengers bearing despatches between the two states, had crossed each other by the way, that of Virginia carrying our propositions for a committee of national correspond- ence, and that of Massachusetts, bringing, as my memory sug- gested, a similar proposition. But here I must have misremem- bered; and the resolutions brought us from Massachusetts, were probably those you mention of the town meeting of Boston, on the motion of Mr. Samuel Adams, appointing a committee ‘to state the rights of the colonists, and of that province in particular, and the infringements of them; to communicate them to the seve- ral towns, as the sense of the town of Boston, and to request, of each town, a free communication of its sentiments on this subject.’ I suppose, therefore, that these resolutions were not received, as you think, while the House of Burgesses was in session in March, 1773, but a few days after we rose, and were probably what was sent by the messenger, who crossed ours by the way. They may however, have been still different. I must, therefore, have been mistaken in supposing, and stating to Mr. Wirt, that the proposition of a committee for national correspondence, was nearly simultaneous in Virginia and Massachusetts.
A similar misapprehension of another passage in Mr. Wirt’s book, for which I am also quoted, has produced a similar recla- mation on the part of Massachusetts, by some of her most distin- guished and estimable citizens. I had been applied to by Mr. Wirt, for such facts respecting Mr. Henry, as my intimacy with him, and participation in the transactions of the day, might have placed within my knowledge. I accordingly committed them to paper; and Virginia bemg the theatre of his action, was the only subject within my contemplation. While speaking of him, of the resolutions and measures here, in which he had the acknowledged lead, I used the expression that ‘Mr. Henry certainly gave the first impulse to the ball of revolution.’ [Wirt, page 41.] The ex- pression is indeed general, and in all its extension, would compre- hend all the sister states; but indulgent construction would restrain it, as was really meant, to the subject matter under contemplation, which was Virginia alone; according to the rule of the lawyers,
