people not
represented in the House of Commons is irreconcilable with their rights."
A committee of correspondence was appointed in Massachusetts to
communicate with other colonial assemblies, and the idea of union for the
common defence began to take firm hold on the public mind. Benjamin
Franklin, in the Congress held at Albany in 1754 to insure the aid of the
Six Nations in the war then breaking out with France, had proposed a plan
of union for the colonies, with a grand council having extensive powers
and a president to be appointed by the crown. The plan was not adopted.
Adams had written about the same time that "the only way to keep us from
setting up for ourselves is to disunite us." Everybody now began to
perceive the need of union, which the great intellects of Franklin and
Adams had discerned long before.

No influence was so powerful in leading the South to stand side by side
with the Northern colonies as that of Patrick Henry, the great orator of
Virginia. In the House of Burgesses, in 1765, Mr. Henry introduced his
celebrated resolutions against the Stamp Act, as follows:

"Resolved, That the first adventurers and settlers of this his
majesty's colony and dominion, brought with them, and transmitted to
their posterity, and all other his majesty's subjects, since
inhabiting in this, his majesty's said colony, all the privileges,
franchises and immunities, that have at any time been held, enjoyed
and possessed by the people of Great Britain.

"Resolved, That by two royal charters, granted by King James the
First, the colonists, aforesaid, are declared entitled to all the
privileges, liberties and immunities of denizens and natural born
subjects, to all intents and purposes, as if they had been abiding
and born within the realm of England.

"Resolved, That the taxation of the people by themselves, or by
persons chosen by themselves to represent them, who can only know
what taxes the people are able to bear, and the easiest mode of
raising them, and are equally affected by such taxes themselves, is
the distinguishing characteristic of British freedom, and without
which the ancient constitution cannot subsist.

"Resolved, That his majesty's liege people of this most ancient
colony have uninterruptedly enjoyed the right of being thus governed
by their own assembly in the article of their taxes and internal
police, and that t