It was in a public gathering in Fredericksburg on the 29th day of April, 1775, that resolutions were passed, approaching in spirit a declaration of independence, which was twenty-one days before the resolutions of Mecklenburg, North Carolina, were adopted. The resolutions, adopted in North Carolina, found their way into print and into the histories, while those passed in Fredericksburg did not; but they were the first adopted anywhere in the country, and more than six hundred men were ready to carry them into effect by marching to Williamsburg to redress wrongs which had been committed by Gov. Dunmore in removing the gun powder from the public magazine. Some regard this act as the beginning of the great revolution in the colonies. It was to prepare the people for any breach of the law or outrage upon the people's rights, which had been threatened by the authorities at Williamsburg, and commenced in the gunpowder act, that the Fredericksburg resolutions were adopted, and the great pity is they were not handed down to succeeding generations and preserved as the first Declaration of Independence since the days of Bacon. In referring to these resolutions, Dr. Howison, in his United States History, says, they were tantamount to a declaration of independence. HENRY LEADS FOR LIBERTY. It was Patrick Henry, of Hanover county, a Virginian, at the time living in and representing Louisa county, who fired the country with his matchless eloquence and set in motion forces that achieved liberty and independence to this country. It was this peerless son of Virginia, in the House of Burgesses, surrounded by such giant minds as Bland, Pendleton, Lee and Wythe, that the torch of liberty was set on fire that was never to be extinguished. We quote from Dr. Howison's United States History: "He wrote on the blank leaf of an old law-book five resolutions which he offered to the House. They were a strong protest against the course of Parliament. The third declared that taxation by the people themselves, or their representatives duly chosen, was an essential characteristic of British freedom. The last resolution was in these words: "'Resolved, therefore, that the General Assembly of this colony have the sole right and power to lay taxes and impositions upon the inhabitants of this colony; and that every attempt to vest such power in any person or persons whatsoever, other than the General Assembly aforesaid, has a manifest tendency to destroy British as well as American freedom.'