my
life I was never more pleased with a State paper than with the Assembly
of Virginia's discussion of Lord North's proposition. It is masterly.
But what I fear is, that the evil is irretrievable."

"At Versailles, the French Minister, Vergennes, was equally attracted by
the wisdom and dignity of the document. He particularly noticed the
insinuation that a compromise might be effected on the basis of the
modification of the Navigation Acts; and saw so many ways opened of
settling every difficulty, that it was long before he could persuade
himself that the infatuation of the British Ministry was so blind as to
neglect them all." (Bancroft's History of the United States, Vol. VII.,
Chap, xxxvii., pp. 386-388.)]

[Footnote 378: Bancroft's History of the United States, Vol. VII., Chap.
xxv., p. 276.

"The offer of freedom to the negroes came very oddly from the
representative of the nation which had sold them to their present
masters, and of the King who had been displeased with the colony for its
desire to tolerate that inhuman traffic no longer; and it was but a sad
resource for a commercial metropolis, to keep a hold on its colony by
letting loose slaves against its own colonists."--_Ib._, p. 276.

"Dunmore's menace to raise the standard of a servile insurrection and
set the slaves upon their masters, with British arms in their hands,
filled the South with horror and alarm. Besides, the retreat of the
British troops from Concord raised the belief that the American forces
were invincible; and the spirit of resistance had grown so strong, that
some of the Burgesses appeared in the uniform of the recently instituted
provincial troops, wearing a hunting shirt of coarse linen over their
clothes, and a woodman's axe by their sides."--_Ib._, pp. 384, 385.]

[Footnote 379: "Meantime, Dunmore, driven from the land of Virginia,
maintained command of the water by means of a flotilla composed of the
_Mercury_, of 24 guns; the _Kingfisher_, of 16; the _Otter_, of 14, with
other ships and light vessels, and tenders which he had engaged in the
King's service. At Norfolk, a town of about 6,000 inhabitants, a
newspaper was published by John Holt. About noon on the last day of
September (1775), Dunmore, finding fault with its favouring (according
to him) 'sedition and rebellion,' sent on shore a small party, who,
meeting with no resistance, seized and brought off two printers and all
the materials of the printing office, so that he