guineas passing from one hand to another to prove that the
province of Virginia was still the ancient and loyal Old
Dominion.

But Fate, or Providence, or whatever it is that presides at the
destinies of nations, has a way of setting aside with ironical
smile the most deliberate actions of men. And so, on this
occasion, it turned out that the hard-won victory of Messrs.
Randolph, Bland, Pendleton, and Wythe was of no avail. William
Gordon tells us, without mentioning the source of his
information, that "a manuscript of the unrevised resolves soon
reached Philadelphia, having been sent off immediately upon their
passing, that the earliest information of what had been done
might be obtained by the Sons of Liberty." From Philadelphia a
copy was forwarded, on June 17, to New York, in which loyal city
the resolutions were thought "so treasonable that their
possessors declined printing them"; but an Irish gentleman from
Connecticut, who was then in town, inquired after them and was
with great precaution permitted to take a copy, which he
straightway carried to New England. All this may be true or not;
but certain it is that six resolutions purporting to come from
Virginia were printed in the Newport "Mercury" on June 24, 1765,
and afterwards, on July 1, in many Boston papers.

The document thus printed did not indeed include the famous fifth
resolution upon which the debate in the House of Burgesses was
"most bloody" and which had been there adopted by a single vote
and afterwards erased from the record; but it included two others
much stronger than that eminently treasonable one: