"Resolved, That his Majesty's Liege people, the inhabitants of
this colony, are not bound to yield obedience to any law or
ordinance whatever, designed to impose any taxation whatsoever
upon them, other than the laws and ordinances of the General
Assembly aforesaid. Resolved, That any person who shall, by
speaking or writing, assert or maintain that any person or
persons, other than the General Assembly of this colony, have any
right or power to impose any taxation on the people here, shall
be deemed an enemy to his Majesty's colony."

These resolutions, which Governor Fauquier had not seen, and
which were perhaps never debated in the House of Burgesses, were
now circulated far and wide as part of the mature decision of the
Virginia Assembly. On the 14th of September, Messrs. Randolph,
Wythe, and Nicholas were appointed a committee to apprise the
Assembly's agent "of a spurious copy of the resolves of the last
Assembly...being dispersed and printed in the News Papers and
to send him a true copy of the votes on that occasion." In those
days of slow and difficult communication, the truth, three months
late, could not easily overtake the falsehood or ever effectively
replace it. In later years, when it was thought an honor to
have begun the Revolution, many men denied the decisive effect of
the Virginia Resolutions in convincing the colonists that the
Stamp Act might be successfully resisted. But contemporaries were
agreed in according them that glory or that infamy. "Two or three
months ago," said Governor Bernard, "I thought that this people
would submit to the Stamp Act. Murmurs were indeed continually
heard, but they seemed to be such as would die away. The
publishing the Virginia Resolutions proved an alarm-bell to the
disaffected." We read the resolutions, said Jonathan Sewell,