s between sixteen and fifty
years of age should form themselves into military companies, and "be
in readiness to act on any emergency,"--with a sort of grim humor
prefacing their recommendation by this exquisite morsel of
argumentative irony:--

"_Resolved_ unanimously, that a well-regulated militia,
composed of the gentlemen freeholders and other freemen, is
the natural strength and only stable security of a free
government; and that such militia will relieve our mother
country from any expense in our protection and defence, will
obviate the pretence of a necessity for taxing us on that
account, and render it unnecessary to keep any standing
army--ever dangerous to liberty--in this province."[145]

The shrewdness of this courteous political thrust on the part of the
convention of Maryland seems to have been so heartily relished by
others that it was thenceforward used again and again by similar
conventions elsewhere; and in fact, for the next few months, these
sentences became almost the stereotyped formula by which revolutionary
assemblages justified the arming and drilling of the militia,--as,
for example, that of Newcastle County, Delaware,[146] on the 21st of
December; that of Fairfax County, Virginia,[147] on the 17th of
January, 1775; and that of Augusta County, Virginia,[148] on the 22d
of February.

In the mean time Lord Dunmore was not blind to all these military
preparations in Virginia; and so early as the 24th of December, 1774,
he had written to the Earl of Dartmouth: "Every county, besides, is
now arming a company of men, whom they call an independent company,
for the avowed purpose of protecting their committees, and to be
employed against government, if occasion require."[149] Moreover, this
alarming fact of military preparation, which Lord Dunmore had thus
reported concerning Virginia, could have been reported with equal
truth concerning nearly every other colony. In the early part of
January, 1775, the Assembly of Connecticut gave order that the entire
militia of that colony should be mustered every week.[150] In the
latter part of January, the provincial convention of Pennsylvania,
though representing a colony of Quakers, boldly proclaimed that, if
the administration "should determine by force to effect a submission
to the late arbitrary acts of the British Parliament," it would
"resist such force, and at every hazard ... defend the rights and
liberties of