So much was for the world. For themselves, they ordered a closer and more effective association throughout the colonies to carry out the policy of a rigorous non-importation and non-consumption of certain classes of British goods as a measure of trade against the English government’s policy of colonial taxation. It recommended, in terms which rang very imperative, that in each colony a committee should be formed in every town or county, according to the colony’s local administrative organization, which should be charged with seeing to it that every one within its area of oversight actually kept, and did not evade, the non-importation agreement; that these committees should act under the direction of the central committee of correspondence in each colony; and that the several colonial committees of correspondence should in their turn report to and put into effect the suggestions of the general Congress of Committees at Philadelphia. For the Congress, upon breaking up at the conclusion of its business in October, resolved to meet again in May of the next year, should the government in England not before that time accede to its prayers for a radical change of policy. Its machinery of surveillance was meanwhile complete. No man could escape the eyes of the local committees. Disregard of the non-importation policy meant that his name would be published, and that he would be diligently talked about as one who was no patriot. The Congress ordered that any colony which declined to enter into the new association should be regarded as hostile to “the liberties of this country.” Samuel Adams himself had not had a more complete system of surveillance or of inquisitorial pressure upon individual conduct and opinion at hand in his township committees of correspondence. In the colonies where sentiment ran warm no man could escape the subtle coercion. [Illustration: PEYTON RANDOLPH]