Bay of its charter, and for transporting offenders into other colonies, or to Great Britain for trial, where it is impossible from the nature of the thing that justice can be obtained, convince us that the administration is determined to stick at nothing to carry its point?  Ought we not, then, to put our virtue and fortitude to the severest test?” He was prepared, he continued, for anything except confiscating British debts, which struck him as dishonorable.  These were plain but pregnant questions, but what we mark in them, and in all his letters of this time, is the absence of constitutional discussion, of which America was then full.  They are confined to a direct presentation of the broad political question, which underlay everything.  Washington always went straight to the mark, and he now saw, through all the dust of legal and constitutional strife, that the only real issue was whether America was to be allowed to govern herself in her own way or not.  In the acts of the ministry he perceived a policy which aimed at substantial power, and he believed that such a policy, if insisted on, could have but one result.

The meeting of Fairfax County was held in due course, and Washington presided.  The usual resolutions for self-government and against the vindictive Massachusetts measures were adopted.  Union and non-importation were urged; and then the congress, which they advocated, was recommended to address a petition and remonstrance to the king, and ask him to reflect that “from our sovereign there can be but one appeal.”  Everything was to be tried, everything was to be done, but the ultimate appeal was never lost sight of where Washington appeared, and the final sentence of these Fairfax County resolves is very characteristic of the leader in the meeting.  Two days later he wrote to the worthy and still remonstrating Bryan Fairfax, repeating and enlarging his former questions, and adding:  “Has not General Gage’s conduct since his arrival, in stopping the address of his council, and publishing a proclamation more becoming a Turkish bashaw than an English governor, declaring it treason to associate in any manner by which the commerce of Great Britain is to be affected,—­has not this exhibited an unexampled testimony of the most despotic system of tyranny that ever was practiced in a free government?...  Shall we after this whine and cry for relief, when we have already tried it in vain?  Or shall we supinely sit and see one province after another fall a sacrifice to despotism?” The fighting spirit of the man was rising.  There was no rash rushing forward, no ignorant shouting for war, no blinking of the real issue, but a foresight that nothing could dim, and a perception of facts which nothing could confuse.  On August 1 Washington was at Williamsburg, to represent his county in the meeting of representatives from all Virginia.  The convention passed resolutions like the Fairfax resolves, and chose delegates to a general congress.