If not constitutional statesmen, they were at least the veritable spokesmen of all men of action, and of the real rank and file of the colonists about them,—as Patrick Henry was in Virginia. John Adams had read to Henry, while the first Congress was sitting in Philadelphia, Joseph Hawley’s opinion that what the ministers had done made it necessary to fight. “I am of that man’s opinion,” cried the high-spirited Virginian. That was what men said everywhere, unless imperatively held back from action by temperament, or interest, or an unusual, indomitable conviction of law-abiding duty, upon whatever exigency or provocation. It is not certain that there could be counted in Massachusetts so much as a majority for resistance in those first days of the struggle for right; but it is certain that those who favored extreme measures had the more effective spirit of initiative among them, the best concert of action, the more definite purpose, the surest instinct of leadership, and stood with true interpretative insight for the latent conviction of right which underlay and supported every colonial charter in America. And not only every colonial charter, but the constitution of England itself. The question now raised, to be once for all settled, was, in reality, the question of constitutional as against personal government; and that question had of late forced itself upon men’s thoughts in England no less than in America. It was the burden of every quiet as well as of every impassioned page in Burke’s _Thoughts on the Present Discontents_, published in 1770. The Parliament of 1774 did not represent England any more than it represented the colonies in America, either in purpose or principle. So ill distributed was the suffrage and the right of representation that great centres of population had scarcely a spokesman in the Commons, while little hamlets, once populous but now deserted, still returned members who assumed to speak for the country. So many voters were directly under the influence of members of the House of Lords, as tenants and dependants; so many members of the House of Lords were willing to put themselves and the seats which they controlled in the Commons at the service of the King, in return for honors and favors received or hoped for; so many elections to the Lower House were corruptly controlled by the court,—so full was Parliament, in short, of placemen and of men who counted upon the crown’s benefactions, that the nation seemed excluded from its own councils, and the King acted as its master without serious let or hinderance.