The Burgesses, however, met at Anthony Hay's house and adopted
Mason's Association. Washington, who was one of the signers of the
Association, wrote to his agents in London: "I am fully determined to
adhere religiously to it."

Five years had now elapsed since the British Tories attempted to fix
on the Colonies the Stamp Act, and although they had withdrawn
that hateful law, the relations between the Mother Country and the
Colonists had not improved. Far from it. The English issued a series
of irritating provisions which convinced the Colonists that the
Government had no real desire to be friendly, and that, on the
contrary, it intended to make no distinction between them and the
other conquered provinces of the Crown. Then and always, the English
forgot that the Colonists were men of their own stock, equally
stubborn in their devotion to principles, and probably more accessible
to scruples of conscience. So they were not likely to be frightened
into subjection. The governing class in England was in a state of mind
which has darkened its judgment more than once; the state of mind
which, when it encounters an obstacle to its plans, regards that
obstacle as an enemy, and remarks in language brutally frank, though
not wholly elegant: "We will lick him first and then decide who is
right." In 1770 King George III, who fretted at all seasons at the
slowness with which he was able to break down the ascendency of the
Whigs, manipulated the Government so as to make Lord North Prime
Minister. Lord North was a servant, one might say a lackey, after
the King's own heart. He abandoned lifelong traditions, principles,
fleeting whims, prejudices even, in order to keep up with the King's
wish of the moment. After Lord North became Prime Minister, the
likelihood of a peaceful settlement between the crown and the Colonies
lessened. He ran ahead of the King in his desire to serve the King's