There are diverse views as to the originator of the committees of correspondence. Gordon's opinion (i. 312) that James Warren was the instigator was adopted by Marshall, but is held by Bancroft (vi. 428) to be erroneous. John Adams gave the first movement to Samuel Adams.[240] One of the first-fruits of the committee, as a provincial measure, was the report drafted by Samuel Adams (Nov. 2, 1772), which was printed as the _Rights of the Colonies_.[241] The vote passed by Virginia, March 12, 1773, was the immediate cause of intercolonial activity.[242] The seizure and destruction of the revenue vessel Gaspee in Narragansett Bay, June 10, 1772, is considered by Rhode Island writers as the earliest aggressive conduct of the patriots. John Russell Bartlett,[243] in the _R. I. Colonial Records_ (vol. vii. pp. 57-192), gathers all the documentary evidence, and this was in 1861 published separately as _A History of the Destruction of his Britannic Majesty's Schooner Gaspee ... accompanied by the Correspondence connected therewith; the action of the General Assembly of Rhode Island thereon, and the official journal of the ... Commission of Inquiry appointed by King George III._[244] Early in 1773 the patriots of Boston produced what is called "the most elaborate state paper of the Revolutionary contest in Massachusetts." This is the reply of the House of Representatives to the governor in the contest then waging with him.[245] The act which included the duty on tea had passed Parliament June 29, 1767, and in March, 1770, it had been repealed, except, in order to maintain the theoretical right of Parliament to tax, the tax on tea had been retained in force. Pownall[246] had exerted his utmost to make the repeal include tea. The test was deferred till it was announced[247] that the East India Company was assisted by government in sending over a surplus of tea which they had. A series of impassioned gatherings in Boston, and demonstrations not so boisterous in the other colonies, led to the destruction of the tea in Boston harbor, and elsewhere resulted in the transshipment of the tea whence it came.[248] [Illustration: A BOSTON WARNING. After an original in the Mass. Hist. Society.] [Illustration: A PHILADELPHIA POSTER. After an original in the library of the Pennsylvania Hist. Society.]