Today one wonders how the King and Parliament could have turned a deaf ear to the ringing words of Edmund Burke in his famous address on "Conciliation with the Colonies." "As long as you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our common faith, wherever the chosen race and sons of England worship freedom, they will turn their faces toward you. The more they multiply, the more friends you will have; the more ardently they love liberty, the more perfect will be their obedience. Slavery they can have anywhere--it is a seed that grows in every soil.... But, until you become lost to all feeling of your true interest and your national dignity, freedom they can have from none but you.... Deny them this participation of freedom, and you break that sole bond which originally made, and must still preserve, the unity of the Empire.... It is the spirit of the English Constitution which, infused through the mighty mass, pervades, feeds, unites, invigorates, vivifies every part of the Empire, even down to the minutest members."[24] In the revolutionary changes in Virginia it was the House of Burgesses, not the Council, who took the lead. Washington, Henry, Jefferson, Pendleton, Richard Henry Lee, George Mason were all Burgesses. In fact the members of the Council were placed in a most embarrassing position. Appointed by the King to aid and advise the royal Governor, they owed a double allegiance--to Crown and country. To them the breach was a tragedy, the choice of allegiance a difficult one. So for the most part they played a negative role. In the Council meetings they usually voted with the Governor. But as the crisis grew more acute they drifted away from him to join their countrymen in resisting the assaults on their liberty. John Page, Junior, in Council supported Dunmore in dissolving the Assembly in May, 1774; yet he remained in town and joined the Burgesses in the procession to the church on the fast day.[25] On the other hand, Robert Carter, though he had refused to drink a cup of tea, would not permit any of his family to observe the day. "By this I conclude he is a courtier," wrote Fithian in his _Diary_. But he did not long remain a "courtier." "The enemies of government are so numerous and so vigilant over the conduct of every man that the loyalists have been so intimidated that they have entirely shrunk away," wrote Dunmore in July, 1775. "Even the Council ... approves everything done by the Burgesses." The only members he could rely upon were Ralph Wormeley, Gawin Corbin, and the Reverend John Camm.[26] The rest, while not subscribing to the Association, adhered strictly to it.