... We need not point out to you the steps you ought to take if the tea-ship falls in your way. You cannot be at a loss how to prevent, or if that cannot be done, how to give the merchants of the city timely notice of her arrival. But this you may depend upon, that whatever pilot brings her into the river, such pilot will be marked for his treason. ... Like Cain, he will be hung out as a spectacle to the nations, and be forever recorded as the _damned traitorous pilot who brought up the tea-ship_.... (Signed) THE COMMITTEE FOR TARRING AND FEATHERING. [Another broadside was addressed as a warning to Captain Ayers of the expected tea-ship. "What think you, Captain, of a Halter round your Neck, ten gallons of liquid Tar decanted on your Pate, with the feathers of a doxen wild Geese lain over that, to enliven your appearance?" All this activity preceded the Boston "Tea-Party." The Philadelphia ship, however, did not arrive until some weeks after she was expected--on Christmas Day at Gloucester Point, near the city. The Captain was escorted to the city, where a mass meeting of 8000 people persuaded him to sail at once for England, without breaking cargo.] FOOTNOTES: [118] Mercer promised not to act unless first he should have secured permission from the Virginia Assembly. He was then borne in triumph to his lodgings by the joyful "mob." [119] George Washington and George Mason (as their preserved letters show) had been in correspondence regarding such a non-importation agreement for some weeks. Mason drew the resolutions; Washington was to have presented them to the Assembly. Now he did so (in person or by deputy) to the informal meeting at Mr. Hay's. See Washington's _Writings_, first edition, II, 263; and _Mason's Life and Correspondence_, I, 136 ff. [120] Only the _result_ of the action of the Committee of the Whole goes on record. Cf. No. 121. XXII. RISE OF REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENTS =The colonies between 1768 and 1773 had each organized, more or less perfectly, local committees--town or county--to enforce non-importation agreements, and these committees often acted as "committees of correspondence" to organize the province as a unit for action. Then in 1773 the Intercolonial Committees (No. 123) gave the germ of a standing continental union.