despite his lack of the talking and debating faculty, he carried more weight than any other member.  He was present on May 29, 1765, when Patrick Henry introduced his famous resolutions and menaced the king’s government in words which rang through the continent.  The resolutions were adopted, and Washington went home, with many anxious thoughts, to discuss the political outlook with his friend and neighbor George Mason, one of the keenest and ablest men in Virginia.  The utter folly of the policy embodied in the Stamp Act struck Washington very forcibly.  With that foresight for which he was so remarkable, he perceived what scarcely any one else even dreamt of, that persistence in this course must surely lead to a violent separation from the mother-country, and it is interesting to note in this, the first instance when he was called upon to consider a political question of great magnitude, his clearness of vision and grasp of mind.  In what he wrote there is no trace of the ambitious schemer, no threatening nor blustering, no undue despondency nor excited hopes.  But there is a calm understanding of all the conditions, an entire freedom from self-deception, and the power of seeing facts exactly as they were, which were all characteristic of his intellectual strength, and to which we shall need to recur again and again.

The repeal of the Stamp Act was received by Washington with sober but sincere pleasure.  He had anticipated “direful” results and “unhappy consequences” from its enforcement, and he freely said that those who were instrumental in its repeal had his cordial thanks.  He was no agitator, and had not come forward in this affair, so he now retired again to Mount Vernon, to his farming and hunting, where he remained, watching very closely the progress of events.  He had marked the dangerous reservation of the principle in the very act of repeal; he observed at Boston the gathering strength of what the wise ministers of George III. called sedition; he noted the arrival of British troops in the rebellious Puritan town; and he saw plainly enough, looming in the background, the final appeal to arms.  He wrote to Mason (April 5, 1769), that “at a time when our lordly masters in Great Britain will be satisfied with nothing less than the deprivation of American freedom, something should be done to avert the stroke and maintain the liberty which we have derived from our ancestors.  But the manner of doing it, to answer the purpose effectually, is the point in question.  That no man should scruple or hesitate a moment to use arms in defense of so valuable a blessing is clearly my opinion.  Yet arms, I would beg leave to add, should be the last resource, the dernier ressort.”  He then urged the adoption of the only middle course, non-importation, but he had not much hope in this expedient, although an honest desire is evident that it may prove effectual.