On this day 250 years ago in Williamsburg, the Virginia House of Burgesses unanimously adopted Resolutions on Lord North’s Conciliatory Proposal. The Resolutions had been drafted by Thomas Jefferson and included the following arguments against British rule:

the British Parliament has no right to intermeddle with the support of civil government in the Colonies. For us, not for them, has government been instituted here; agreeable to our Ideas provision has been made for such Officers as we think necessary for the administration of public affairs; and we cannot conceive that any other legislature has a right to prescribe either the number or pecuniary appointments of our Offices. . . .

. . .

still leaving unrepealed their several Acts passed for the purposes of restraining the trade and altering the form of Government of the Eastern Colonies; . . . taking from us the right of trial by jury; and transporting us into other Countries to be tried for criminal Offences. . . .

Because at the very time of requiring from us grants of Money they are making disposition to invade us with large Armaments by Sea and land, which is a stile of asking gifts not reconcileable to our freedom. They are also proceeding to a Repetition of injury by passing acts for restraining the commerce and fisheries of the Provinces of New England, and for prohibiting the Trade of the other Colonies with all parts of the world except the Islands of Great Britain, Ireland, and the West Indies. This seems to bespeak no intention to discontinue the exercise of this usurped Power over us in future.

. . .

Because the proposition now made to us involves the interest of all the other Colonies. We are now represented in General Congress, by members approved by this House where our former Union it is hoped will be so strongly cemented that no partial Application can produce the slightest departure from the common Cause. We consider ourselves as bound in Honor as well as Interest to share one general Fate with our Sister Colonies, and should hold ourselves base Deserters of that Union, to which we have acceded, were we to agree on any Measures distinct and apart from them.

. . .

Final determination we leave to the General Congress now sitting, before whom we shall lay the Papers his Lordship has communicated to us. To their Wisdom we commit the improvement of this important advance; if it can be wrought into any good, we are assured they will do it. To them also we refer the discovery of that proper method of representing our well founded grievancies which his Lordship assures us will meet with the attention and regard so justly due to them. For ourselves, we have exhausted every mode of application which our invention could suggest as proper and promising. We have decently remonstrated with Parliament; they have added new injuries to the old: we have wearied our King with supplication, he has not deigned to answer us: We have appealed to the native honour and justice of the British nation; their efforts in our favour have been hitherto ineffectual. What then remains to be done? That we commit our injuries to the even-handed justice of that being who doth no wrong, earnestly beseeching him to illuminate the Councils and prosper the endeavors of those to whom America hath confided her hopes; that thro’ their wise direction we may again see reunited the blessings of Liberty, Property, and Union with Great Britain.

Source: “Virginia Resolutions on Lord North’s Conciliatory Proposal, 10 June 1775,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-01-02-0106. [Original source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 1, 1760–1776, ed. Julian P. Boyd. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950, pp. 170–174.]