While these letters were circulating, the period arrived for the meeting of a new general court, which assembled at Boston, [May 25.] when the services of the election day were carried on as usual; but the hearts of many felt sad with the apprehension that it would be the last of the kind. Their forebodings were increased, by the number and characters of the elected counsellors whom governor Gage negatived, not less than thirteen. He laid nothing before the court more than the ordinary besiness of the province; but gave them notice of their removal to Salem on the first of June in pursuance of the act. Learning that the house of assembly, to avoid removing were hastening through the necessary business, with the greatest expedition, he adjourned the general court to the seventh of June, then to meet at Salem. Before that day the inhabitants of several towns and cities, in different parts of the continent, concurred in expressing the greatest disapprobation of the measures pursued against Boston, an abhorrence of the new act, and a condemnation of the principles on which it was founded, with a resolution to oppose its effects in every manner, and to support their distressed brethren, who were to be the immediate victims. At Philadelphia a subscription was set on foot for the support of such poor inhabitants of Boston, as should be deprived of the means of subsistence by the operation of the act. The Virginia house of burgesses appointed the first of June to be set apart as a day of fasting and humiliation, devoutly to implore the divine interposition, for averting the heavy calamity which threatened destruction to their civil rights, and the evils of a civil war; and for giving one heart and one mind to the people, firmly to oppose every injury to the American rights. This occasioned their dissolution; but before they separated, eighty nine of the members entered into an association, in which they declared, “That an attack made on one of our sister colonies, to compel submission to arbritrary taxes, is an attack made on all British America, and threatens ruin to the rights of all, unless the united wisdom of the whole be applied.” They recommended to the committee of correspondence, to communicate with the several committees of the other provinces, on the expediency of appointing deputies from the different colonies, to meet annually in general congress, to deliberate on those measures, which the united interests of America might from time to time require.