This was really the core of the question. Jefferson had reached that conclusion, not from following a certain line of abstract reasoning, but after studying the history of the Greek colonies in Stanyan, and the history of the Saxon settlement of Great Britain in many authors, as may be seen in his "Commonplace Book", and he was soon to reaffirm the doctrine of expatriation as the fundamental principle on which rested all the claims of the American colonies. The Virginia Convention was to meet at Williamsburg on August 1, to select delegates to a General Congress of the colonies. With all his books at hand, all his legal authorities, the precious "Commonplace Book" and all the repertories he had gathered in his library, Jefferson proceeded to draft a project of instructions for the future delegates. He was taken ill on his way to Williamsburg but forwarded the plan to Peyton Randolph and Patrick Henry. Henry never mentioned it; Randolph informed the convention that he had received such a paper from a member, prevented by sickness from offering it, and laid it on the table for perusal. It was read generally by the members, approved by many, though thought too bold for use at that time; but they printed it in pamphlet form, under the title of "A Summary View of the Rights of British America." In some respects it is a more original and more important document than the Declaration of Independence itself. With the detailed account of the grievances enumerated by Jefferson we cannot deal here. A few points, however, deserve special attention. The difficulties that had arisen between the colonies and the home government had occasioned the publication of many pamphlets dealing with the situation. Most of Jefferson's predecessors, however, had attempted to define _in jure_ the rights of the British colonies. Thus George Mason had made his "Extracts" from the Virginia charters, "with some remarks on them" in 1773, and he had come to the conclusion already given in the "Fairfax resolves", that "the ancestors of the colonists when they had left their native land and settled in America had brought with them, although not confirmed by Charters, the civil government and form of government of the country they came from."[33] But he had gone back no farther in history and had not formulated the principles of the "constitution" of England. Not so with Jefferson, who emphatically denied that the colonists had anything to do with the British constitution or with its form of government. He had studied the history of the settlement of England in Molesworth, in Pelloutier, in Sir William Temple, in Dalrymple, and had come to the conclusion enunciated in the "Rights of British America":