f the Massachusetts House of Representatives in the
estimation of other colonies, and produced responses of approval from
most of their General Assemblies.

The Speaker of the House of Burgesses of Virginia, in a letter to the
Speaker of the House of Representatives of Massachusetts, dated
Virginia, May 9, 1768, says:

"The House of Burgesses of this colony proceeded, very soon after they
met, to the consideration of your important letter of the 11th of
February, 1768, written in the name and by the order of the House of
Representatives of your province; and I have received their particular
direction to desire you to inform that honourable House that they
applaud them for their attention to American liberty, and that the steps
they have taken thereon will convince them of their opinion of the fatal
tendency of the Acts of Parliament complained of, and of their fixed
resolution to concur with the other colonies in their application for
redress.

"After the most deliberate consultation, they thought it their duty to
represent to the Parliament of Great Britain that they are truly
sensible of the happiness and security they derive from their connection
with and dependence upon Great Britain, and are under the greatest
concern that any unlucky incident should interrupt that salutary harmony
which they wish ever to subsist. They lament that the remoteness of
their situation often exposes them to such misrepresentations as are apt
to involve them in censures of disloyalty to their Sovereign, and the
want of proper respect to the British Parliament; whereas they have
indulged themselves in the agreeable persuasion, that they ought to be
considered as inferior to none of their fellow-subjects in loyalty and
affection.

"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 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 natural rights of British subjects when they assert that
no power on earth has a right to impose taxes on the people, or take the
smallest