The names of the committees seemed anything but earth-shaking. The one in New Jersey  was  known  as  a  "Committee  of Correspondence  and  Inquiry." The  name sounded ordinary but such committees were not ordinary, for their inquiries and correspondence questioned the colonial laws of the mother country. 

     This plan of approach had its beginnings in England, where during the reign of the Stuart Kings James and Charles dissatisfaction with kingly practice took the form of chains of letters, binding together the views of a wide circle of opposition. 

     As early as 1764 correspondence in the American colonies resulted in a protest against British  duties  on  West  Indian  sugar  and molasses. In 1772, committees in New England towns were corresponding to express concern over the trends of legislation in the British Parliament. Still there was little talk of a union of the colonies, much less of a revolution.

     In March of 1773, the Virginia House of Burgesses named a standing committee to correspond with the other colonies on such subjects as the taxes legislated by Parliament on "painters' colours, glass, and oil."

     Virginia's committee in addressing the other twelve colonies suggested that each colony name a similar committee. This was an important approach to union; however by July of 1773 only four colonies in New England and one in the South had followed Virginia's lead.

     Colonial unanimity came later, after the decision  by  Parliament  to  dump  a  large quantity of excess tea on American importers, at prices including a tax. News of the so-called "Tea Act" reached the colonies in the fall of 1773, and was followed by the tea itself, arriving in shiploads at each principal American city.

     With the onset of winter tea ships arrived in Boston, bringing on the "Boston Tea Party" of December 16, 1773. Only a few days later the tea ship Polly appeared in the Delaware.

     News of its coming was relayed up and down the river, and amidst much hue and cry a crowd of some 8,000 colonists assembled in the State House yard in Philadelphia.

     Captain Ayers of the Polly became the guest of the crowd, and was informed firmly that the taxed tea was not wanted by Delaware Valley importers -- who had already been quite firmly persuaded, amidst more hue and cry, that they did not want it.

     Placing discretion above valor, Captain Ayers provisioned his ship and sailed out of the river on December 27, 1773, back to England with his 700 chests of tea intact; and the forced return of the vessel was looked upon by the British Parliament as an evidence of nothing less than insurrection on the part of the Delaware Valley colonists.

     This and other incidents of like nature had the effect of uniting the colonial attitude, north and south, as never before.

     In Burlington on February 8, 1774, the New Jersey Assembly took up once more, from the table where it had been placed in 1773, the resolution to establish a Committee of Correspondence and Inquiry -- and named its committee of nine men promptly, to act for the colony as a whole. Three of the nine were from Burlington County.

     The committee was charged with obtaining "intelligence of all Acts and Resolutions of the Parliament of Great Britain...that may have any relation to or may affect the liberties or privileges of his Majesty's subjects in the British Colonies in America."

     Taxation was a warm subject, then as now, and "taxation without representation" was considered an infringement on personal liberty. In the course of their protests, in 1774, the American colonists caught the vision of a larger goal: united action through a Congress of the Colonies.