The writings of George Washington; being his correspondence, addresses, messages, and other papers, official and private, selected and published from the original manuscripts; with a life of the author, notes and illustrations. By Jared Sparks.

488 WASH1NGTON'S WRITINGS. [APPENDIX.
No. IX. p. 391.
FAIRFAX COUNTY RESOLVES.
The draft, from which the following resolves are printed, I find
among Washington's papers in the handwriting of George Mason,
by whom they were probably drawn up; yet as they were adopted by
the committee of which Washington was chairman, and reported by
him as moderator of the meeting, they may be presumed to express
his opinions, formed on a perfect knowledge of the subject, and after
cool deliberation. This may indeed be inferred from his letter to Mr.
Bryan Fairfax, in which he intimates a doubt only as to the article favoring the idea of a further petition to the King. He was opposed
to such a step, believing enough had been done in this way already;
but he yielded the point in tenderness to the more wavering resolution of his associates.
These resolves are framed with much care and ability, and exhibit the question then at issue, and the state of public feeling, in a
manner so clear and forcible, as to give them a special claim to a
place in the present work, in addition to the circumstance of their
being the matured views of Washington, at the outset of the great
revolutionary struggle, in which he was to act so conspicuous a part.
" At a general Meeting of the Freeholders and Inhabitants of the
County of Fairfax on Monday, the 18th day of July, 1774, at the
Court-House; George Washington, Chairman, and Robert Harrison, Clerk of the said Meeting;
" 1. Resolved, That this colony and dominion of Virginia cannot
be considered as a conquered country; and if it was, that the present
inhabitants are the descendants not of the conquered, but of the conquerors. That the same was not settled at the national expense of
England, but at the private expense of the adventurers, our ancestors,
by solemn compact with, and under the auspices and protection of,
the British crown; upon which we are in every respect as dependent,
as the people of Great Britain, and in the same manner subject to all
his Majesty's just, legal, and constitutional prerogatives. That our
ancestors, when they left their native land and settled in America,
brought with them (even if the same had not been confirmed by
charters) the civil constitution and form of government of the country
they came from; and were, by the laws of nature and nations, en