As a countervailing measure, merchants in the various coast towns entered into an agreement to cease importing from Great Britain, every thing but a few articles of common necessity (and especially those things enumerated in the impost bill), from the first of January, 1769, to the first of January, 1770, unless the obnoxious act should be sooner repealed. The people every where seconded this movement by earnest co-operation, and Provincial legislatures commended the scheme. An agreement, presented in the Virginia House of Burgesses by Washington, was signed by every member; and in all the colonies the people entered at once upon a course of self-denial. For more than a year this powerful engine of retaliation waged war upon British commerce in a constitutional way, before ministers would listen to petitions and remonstrances; and it was not until virtual rebellion in the British capital, born of commercial distress, menaced the ministry, that the expostulations of the Americans were noticed, except with sneers. In America meetings were frequently held, and men thus encouraged each other by mutual conference. Nor did _men_, alone, preach and practice self-denial; American _women_, the wives and daughters of patriots, cast their influence into the scale of patriotism, and by cheering voices and noble examples, became efficient co-workers. And when, in Boston, cupidity overcame patriotism, and the defection of a few merchants who loved gold more than liberty, aroused the friends of the non-importation leagues, and assembled them in general council in Faneuil Hall, there to declare that they would "totally abstain from the use of TEA," and other proscribed articles, the women of that city, fired with zeal for the general good, spoke out publicly and decidedly upon the subject. Early in February, 1770, the mistresses of three hundred families subscribed their names to a league, binding themselves not to use any more TEA until the impost clause in the Revenue Act should be repealed. Their daughters speedily followed their patriotic example, and three days afterward, a multitude of young ladies in Boston and vicinity, signed the following pledge: "We, the daughters of those patriots who have, and do now appear for the public interest, and in that principally regard their posterity--as such, do with pleasure engage with them in denying ourselves the drinking of foreign TEA, in hopes to frustrate a plan which tends to deprive a whole community of all that is valuable in life." [Illustration: FANEUIL HALL.]