The next day Governor Dunmore pronounced the usual English remedy in such circumstances: the dissolution of the Assembly. Once more the members met in the Apollo room, and "they agreed to an association, and instructed the committee of correspondence to propose to the corresponding committees of the other colonies to appoint deputies to meet in Congress at such place _annually_ as would be convenient, to direct, from time to time, the measures required by the general interest." This passage in the "Autobiography" has led historians into a spirited controversy as to whether the proposal to form a Congress originated in Virginia or in Massachusetts, and whether such a plan had not been discussed in Boston as early as 1770. Whatever the case may be, the most important part of the resolution passed in the Raleigh Tavern was not the establishment of a coördinating organism; it was the declaration recorded by Jefferson, "that an attack on any one colony should be considered as an attack on the whole." This last part was not a simple administrative provision, it was more than a promise of a union; it was the constitution of a new society, since according to Kames as quoted by Jefferson in his "Commonplace Book" "mutual defence against a more powerful neighbor is in early times the chief, or sole motive for joining society." The deputies went back home and, on the first of June, met the assemblies of the people "to perform ceremonies of the day and to address to them discourses suited to the occasion. The people met generally, with anxiety and alarm in their countenance, and the effect of the day, through the whole colony was like a shock of electricity, arousing every man and placing him erect and solid on his centre."[31] As a result of the train of thought started by the meeting, the freeholders of Albemarle County adopted on June 26 a series of resolutions evidently written by Jefferson. Here for the first time Jefferson declared that: The inhabitants of the several States of British America are subject to the laws which they adopted at their first settlement, and to such others as have been since made by their respective Legislatures, duly constituted and appointed with their own consent. That no other Legislature whatever can rightly exercise authority over them; and that these privileges they as the common rights of mankind, confirmed by the political constitutions they have respectively assumed, and also by several charters of compact from the Crown. The originality of this theory cannot be determined without comparison with the resolutions adopted a few days before by the Assembly of Fairfax County presided over by Colonel George Washington. These came from the pen of George Mason and they stated with equal emphasis the contractual theory of the government of the British colonies. Whether Jefferson knew them or not, the similarity with the views expressed by the freeholders of Albemarle is most striking.