A proposition was next made for an address to the other colonies on
the power claimed by parliament, which, after considerable debate, was
carried in the affirmative; and a circular letter to the assemblies of
the several provinces, setting forth the proceedings of the house of
representatives, was prepared and adopted.[194]

[Footnote 194: See note V, at the end of the volume.]

To rescue their measures from the imputation of systematic opposition
to the British government, the house, without acknowledging the
obligation of the mutiny act, complied with a requisition of the
governor to make a farther provision for one of the King's garrisons
within the province. The governor, soon afterwards, prorogued the
general court with an angry speech, not calculated to diminish the
resentments of the house directed against himself; resentments
occasioned as much by the haughtiness of his manners, and a persuasion
that he had misrepresented their conduct and opinions to ministers, as
by the unpopular course his station required him to pursue.[195]

[Footnote 195: Minot.]

The circular letter of the house of representatives of Massachusetts
was well received in the other colonies. They approved the measures
which had been taken, and readily united in them. They, too,
petitioned the King against the obnoxious acts of parliament, and
instructed their several agents to use all proper means to obtain
their repeal. Virginia transmitted a statement of her proceedings[196]
to her sister colonies; and her house of Burgesses, in a letter to
Massachusetts, communicating the representation made to parliament,
say, "that they do not affect an independency of their parent kingdom,
the prosperity of which they are bound, to the utmost of their
abilities, to promote; but cheerfully acquiesce in the authority of
parliament to make laws for the preserving a necessary dependence, and
for regulating the trade of the colonies; yet they cannot conceive,
and humbly insist, it is not essential to support a proper relation
between the mother country, and colonies transplanted from her, that
she should have a right to raise money from them without their
consent, and presume they do not aspire to more than the right of
British subjects, when they assert that no power on earth has a right
to impose taxes on the people, or take the smallest portion of their
property without their consent given by their representatives in
parliament."[197]