When Henry came to the fifth resolution there must have been a gasp of surprise. It held that any attempt to vest the power to tax the colonies in any other body than the Assembly was illegal, unjust, and unconstitutional, and tended to destroy British as well as American liberty. Henry did not introduce the other two resolutions, probably because of the uproar which the reading of the fifth occasioned. A violent debate ensued. George Wythe, John Robinson, Peyton Randolph, and others thought the language too extreme. But what Fauquier described as "the young, hot, and giddy members," were carried along by Henry's eloquence. "Tarquin and Caesar each had his Brutus, Charles I his Cromwell, and George III...." At this point he was interrupted by the Speaker who declared that he had spoken treason. Henry denied that he advocated treason. If he had said anything wrong, it should be attributed to his concern over his country's dying liberty.[41] The first four resolutions passed by safe margins, but the fifth barely got by, by a vote of twenty to nineteen. In alarm the more conservative members sent out a hurry call for such absent Burgesses as were still in or near Williamsburg. When several had come in an attempt was made to have the resolutions struck off the journal. They succeeded with the fifth, Fauquier reported, "which was thought the most offensive," but failed with the other four.[42] Perhaps Henry, himself, as he left Williamsburg, wearing a pair of leather breeches and leading his bony nag by the bridle, did not realize that his resolutions would be the alarm bell of revolution. The _Maryland Gazette_, the _Newport Gazette_, the _Boston Gazette_, and other papers published them, not only the four which passed in the House, but the other three as well. And the sixth and seventh were radical indeed. They declared that the people of the colony were not bound to obey any laws to tax them other than those passed by the Assembly, and that any person who should uphold such laws "by speaking or writing" should be deemed an enemy of the colony. It was the policy of resistance. Virginia was now aflame. It was rumored that groups of men from all parts of the colony were preparing to march on Williamsburg to seize and destroy the stamps as soon as they arrived. Many justices declared that they would resign rather than use the stamps in the processes of their courts, and it seemed certain that others would follow their example. From Westmoreland came word that a mob had burned in effigy the stamp distributor for Virginia, Colonel George Mercer, a native Virginian who had served in the French and Indian War.[43] Fauquier waited anxiously for his arrival with the stamps, praying that adverse winds would delay him until the session of the General Court was over and the crowds of merchants, persons involved in suits, debtors, witnesses, and others had left town.