purpose will be appointed by most of the other As-
semblies upon the continent." ¹

Whatever may have been the secret springs,
the news of the Virginia action was most
warmly welcomed. The General Court had
adjourned, but the Boston Committee of Corre-
spondence distributed the Southern resolutions
far and wide. Samuel Adams at once testified
his joy, in a letter to R. H. Lee; and immedi-
ately upon the convening of the new legisla-
ture, to which he, with Hancock, Cushing, and
Phillips, had been elected by an almost unani-
mous vote, resolves were introduced responding
warmly to the Southern overtures and estab-
lishing a legislative Committee of Correspond-
ence. Fifteen members were to constitute it,
eight of them forming a quorum. Though
Cushing was nominally chairman, Samuel Ad-
ams was of course the inspirer and chief mover,
as he also was of the Boston committee. In
both he was by far the foremost man, fanning,
as it were, with one hand the fires of freedom
already alight in the Massachusetts towns, and
with the other holding the torch to the tinder
piled up and ready, though not yet kindled, in
the slower colonies, until at last the whole land
was brought into a conflagration of discontent.

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