This body consisted of some of the ablest and most illustrious Americans who ever lived. George Washington, Peyton Randolph, Richard Bland, Edmund Pendleton, George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee were all members, and Henry at the first session won a place in the front rank among them. In May, 1765, he introduced a series of resolutions, reiterating and enlarging the propositions of the parson's case, and declaring that the people of Virginia are entitled to all the rights of British subjects, and that they alone, through their General Assembly, "have the sole right and power to lay taxes and impositions on this colony," and that any attempt by any other authority "has a manifest tendency to destroy British as well as American freedom." They were opposed by the old members, but the eloquent logic of Henry, backed by Johnston, a member from Fairfax, carried them by a close vote, the last one by a majority of one. In this debate, Henry in a passion of eloquence exclaimed, "Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell, and George III.----" "Treason," cried the Speaker and the House----"may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it." The next day, the House in a panic, reconsidered, rejected, and expunged from the _Journal_ the last resolution, which asserted the sole right of taxation in Virginia, and denied it to Parliament. Henry continued a member of the House of Burgesses from Louisa County until the close of the Revolution. He led Virginia in resistance to the tax on tea, and in organizing armed resistance to the Mother Country by all the colonies. He was among the first of the Americans who understood that liberty could only be preserved by defending it by force. He was sent as a deputy from Virginia to the first Continental Congress, which met at Philadelphia in September, 1774. He at once took a commanding influence in that body, and on its adjournment in October, returned home. In March, 1776, he attended the Convention of Virginia held in Richmond. Here he moved that "this colony be immediately put in a state of defence, and that a committee be appointed to prepare a plan for embodying, assigning, and disciplining such a number of men as may be sufficient for that purpose." Bland, Harrison, Pendleton, and Nicholas, all vigorously opposed these resolutions as leading inevitably and logically to revolution and separation; but Henry, in a storm of patriotic, eloquent enthusiasm, carried everything, uttering those deathless sentences, "Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle. What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? "Is life so dear or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? "Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"