FIRST TRIUMPHS AT THE CAPITAL
It is not in the least strange that the noble-minded clergyman, who
was the plaintiff in the famous cause of the Virginia parsons, should
have been deeply offended by the fierce and victorious eloquence of
the young advocate on the opposite side, and should have let fall,
with reference to him, some bitter words. Yet it could only be in a
moment of anger that any one who knew him could ever have said of
Patrick Henry that he was disposed "to trample under foot the
interests of religion," or that he had any ill-will toward the church
or its ministers. It is very likely that, in the many irritations
growing out of a civil establishment of the church in his native
colony, he may have shared in feelings that were not uncommon even
among devout churchmen there; but in spite of this, then and always,
to the very end of his life, his most sacred convictions and his
tenderest affections seem to have been on the side of the institutions
and ministers of Christianity, and even of Christianity in its
historic form. Accordingly, both before and after his great speech, he
tried to indicate to the good men whose legal claims it had become
his professional duty to resist, that such resistance must not be
taken by them as implying on his part any personal unkindness. To his
uncle and namesake, the Reverend Patrick Henry, who was even then a
plaintiff in a similar suit, and whom he had affectionately persuaded
not to remain at the courthouse to hear the coming speech against the
pecuniary demands of himself and his order, he said "that the clergy
had not thought him worthy of being retained on their side," and that
"he knew of no moral principle by which he was bound to refuse a fee
from their adversaries."[57] So, too, the conciliatory words, which,
after the trial, he tried to speak to the indignant plaintiff, and
which the latter has reported in the blunt form corresponding to his
own angry interpretation of them, after all may have borne the better
meaning given to them by Bishop Meade, who says that Patrick Henry, in
his apology to Maury, "pleaded as an excuse for his course, that he
was a young lawyer, a candidate for practice and reputation, and
therefore must make the best of his cause."[58]
These genial efforts at pacification are of rather more than casual
significance: they are indications of character. They mark a distinct
quality of the man's nature, of which he continued to give evidence
during the rest of his life,--a certain sweetness of spirit, which
never deserted him through all the stern conflicts of his career. He
was always a good fighter: never a good hater. He had the brain and
the temperament of an advocate; his imagination and his heart always
kindled hotly to the side that he had espoused, and with his
imagination and his heart always went all the rest of the man; in his
advocacy of any cause that he had thus made his own, he hesitated at
no weapon either of offence or of defence; he struck hard blows--he
spoke hard words--and he usually triumphed; and yet, even in the
paroxysms of the combat, and still more so when the combat was over,
he showed how possible it is to be a redoubtable antagonist without
having a particle of malice.
Then, too, from this first great scene in his public life, there comes
down to us another incident that has its own story to tell. In all the
roar of talk within and about the courthouse, after the trial was
over, one "Mr. Cootes, merchant of James River," was heard to say that
"he would have given a considerable sum out of his own pocket rather
than his friend Patrick should have been guilty of a crime but little,
if any thing, inferior to that which brought Simon Lord Lovat to the
block,"--adding that Patrick's speech had "exceeded the most seditious
and inflammatory harangues of the Tribunes of Old Rome."[59] Here,
then, thus early in his career, even in this sorrowful and alarmed
criticism on the supposed error of his speech, we find a token of that
loving interest in him and in his personal fate, which even in those
days began to possess the heartstrings of many a Virginian all about
the land, and which thenceforward steadily broadened and deepened into
a sort of popular idolization of him. The mysterious hold which
Patrick Henry came to have upon the people of Virginia is an historic
fact, to be recognized, even if not accounted for. He was to make
enemies in abundance, as will appear; he was to stir up against
himself the alarm of many thoughtful and conservative minds, the
deadly hatred of many an old leader in colonial politics, the deadly
envy of many a younger aspirant to public influence; he was to go on
ruffling the plumage and upsetting the combinations of all sorts of
good citizens, who, from time to time, in making their reckonings
without him, kept finding that they had reckoned without their host.
But for all that, the willingness of this worthy Mr. Cootes of James
River to part with his money, if need be, rather than his friend
Patrick should go far wrong, seems to be one token of the beginning of
that deep and swelling passion of love for him that never abated among
the mass of the people of Virginia so long as Patrick lived, and
perhaps has never abated since.
It is not hard to imagine the impulse which so astonishing a forensic
success must have given to the professional and political career of
the young advocate. Not only was he immediately retained by the
defendants in all the other suits of the same kind then instituted in
the courts of the colony, but, as his fee-books show, from that hour
his legal practice of every sort received an enormous increase.
Moreover, the people of Virginia, always a warm-hearted people, were
then, to a degree almost inconceivable at the North, sensitive to
oratory, and admirers of eloquent men. The first test by which they
commonly ascertained the fitness of a man for public office, concerned
his ability to make a speech; and it cannot be doubted that from the
moment of Patrick Henry's amazing harangue in the "Parsons' Cause,"--a
piece of oratory altogether surpassing anything ever before heard in
Virginia,--the eyes of men began to fasten upon him as destined to
some splendid and great part in political life.
During the earlier years of his career, Williamsburg was the capital
of the colony,--the official residence of its governor, the place of
assemblage for its legislature and its highest courts, and, at certain
seasons of the year, the scene of no little vice-regal and provincial
magnificence.
Thither our Patrick had gone in 1760 to get permission to be a lawyer.
Thither he now goes once more, in 1764, to give some proof of his
quality in the profession to which he had been reluctantly admitted,
and to win for himself the first of a long series of triumphs at the
colonial capital,--triumphs which gave food for wondering talk to all
his contemporaries, and long lingered in the memories of old men. Soon
after the assembling of the legislature, in the fall of 1764, the
committee on privileges and elections had before them the case of
James Littlepage, who had taken his seat as member for the county of
Hanover, but whose right to the seat was contested, on a charge of
bribery and corruption, by Nathaniel West Dandridge. For a day or two
before the hearing of the case, the members of the house had "observed
an ill-dressed young man sauntering in the lobby," apparently a
stranger to everybody, moving "awkwardly about ... with a countenance
of abstraction and total unconcern as to what was passing around him;"
but who, when the committee convened to consider the case of Dandridge
against Littlepage, at once took his place as counsel for the former.
The members of the committee, either not catching his name or not
recalling the association attaching to it from the scene at Hanover
Court House nearly a twelvemonth before, were so affected by his
rustic and ungainly appearance that they treated him with neglect and
even with discourtesy; until, when his turn came to argue the cause of
his client, he poured forth such a torrent of eloquence, and exhibited
with so much force and splendor the sacredness of the suffrage and the
importance of protecting it, that the incivility and contempt of the
committee were turned into admiration.[60] Nevertheless, it appears
from the journals of the House that, whatever may have been the
admiration of the committee for the eloquence of Mr. Dandridge's
advocate, they did not award the seat to Mr. Dandridge.
Such was Patrick Henry's first contact with the legislature of
Virginia,--a body of which he was soon to become a member, and over
which, in spite of the social prestige, the talents, and the envious
opposition of its old leaders, he was promptly to gain an ascendancy
that constituted him, almost literally, the dictator of its
proceedings, so long as he chose to hold a place in it. On the present
occasion, having finished the somewhat obscure business that had
brought him before the committee, it is probable that he instantly
disappeared from the scene, not to return to it until the following
spring, when he came back to transact business with the House itself.
For, early in May, 1765, a vacancy having occurred in the
representation for the county of Louisa, Patrick Henry, though not
then a resident in that county, was elected as its member. The first
entry to be met with in the journals, indicating his presence in the
House, is that of his appointment, on the 20th of May, as an
additional member of the committee for courts of justice. Between that
date and the 1st of June, when the House was angrily dissolved by the
governor, this young and very rural member contrived to do two or
three quite notable things--things, in fact, so notable that they
conveyed to the people of Virginia the tidings of the advent among
them of a great political leader, gave an historic impulse to the
series of measures which ended in the disruption of the British
Empire, and set his own name a ringing through the world,--not without
lively imputations of treason, and comforting assurances that he was
destined to be hanged.
The first of these notable things is one which incidentally throws a
rather painful glare on the corruptions of political life in our old
and belauded colonial days. The speaker of the House of Burgesses at
that time was John Robinson, a man of great estate, foremost among all
the landed aristocracy of Virginia. He had then been speaker for about
twenty-five years; for a long time, also, he had been treasurer of the
colony; and in the latter capacity he had been accustomed for many
years to lend the public money, on his own private account, to his
personal and political friends, and particularly to those of them who
were members of the House. This profligate business had continued so
long that Robinson had finally become a defaulter to an enormous
amount; and in order to avert the shame and ruin of an exposure, he
and his particular friends, just before the arrival of Patrick Henry,
had invented a very pretty device, to be called a "public loan
office,"--"from which monies might be lent on public account, and on
good landed security, to individuals," and by which, as was expected,
the debts due to Robinson on the loans which he had been granting
might be "transferred to the public, and his deficit thus completely
covered."[61] Accordingly, the scheme was brought forward under nearly
every possible advantage of influential support. It was presented to
the House and to the public as a measure eminently wise and
beneficial. It was supported in the House by many powerful and
honorable members who had not the remotest suspicion of the corrupt
purpose lying at the bottom of it. Apparently it was on the point of
adoption when, from among the members belonging to the upper counties,
there arose this raw youth, who had only just taken his seat, and who,
without any information respecting the secret intent of the measure,
and equally without any disposition to let the older and statelier
members do his thinking for him, simply attacked it, as a scheme to be
condemned on general principles. From the door of the lobby that day
there stood peering into the Assembly Thomas Jefferson, then a law
student at Williamsburg, who thus had the good luck to witness the
debut of his old comrade. "He laid open with so much energy the spirit
of favoritism on which the proposition was founded, and the abuses to
which it would lead, that it was crushed in its birth."[62] He
"attacked the scheme ... in that style of bold, grand, and
overwhelming eloquence for which he became so justly celebrated
afterwards. He carried with him all the members of the upper
counties, and left a minority composed merely of the aristocracy of
the country. From this time his popularity swelled apace; and Robinson
dying four years after, his deficit was brought to light, and
discovered the true object of the proposition."[63]
But a subject far greater than John Robinson's project for a loan
office was then beginning to weigh on men's minds. Already were
visible far off on the edge of the sky, the first filmy threads of a
storm-cloud that was to grow big and angry as the years went by, and
was to accompany a political tempest under which the British Empire
would be torn asunder, and the whole structure of American colonial
society wrenched from its foundations. Just one year before the time
now reached, news had been received in Virginia that the British
ministry had announced in parliament their purpose to introduce, at
the next session, an act for laying certain stamp duties on the
American colonies. Accordingly, in response to these tidings, the
House of Burgesses, in the autumn of 1764, had taken the earliest
opportunity to send a respectful message to the government of England,
declaring that the proposed act would be deemed by the loyal and
affectionate people of Virginia as an alarming violation of their
ancient constitutional rights. This message had been elaborately drawn
up, in the form of an address to the king, a memorial to the House of
Lords, and a remonstrance to the Commons;[64] the writers being a
committee composed of gentlemen prominent in the legislature, and of
high social standing in the colony, including Landon Carter, Richard
Henry Lee, George Wythe, Edmund Pendleton, Benjamin Harrison, Richard
Bland, and even Peyton Randolph, the king's attorney-general.
Meantime, to this appeal no direct answer had been returned; instead
of which, however, was received by the House of Burgesses, in May,
1765, about the time of Patrick Henry's accession to that body, a copy
of the Stamp Act itself. What was to be done about it? What was to be
done by Virginia? What was to be done by her sister colonies? Of
course, by the passage of the Stamp Act, the whole question of
colonial procedure on the subject had been changed. While the act was,
even in England, merely a theme for consideration, and while the
colonies were virtually under invitation to send thither their views
upon the subject, it was perfectly proper for colonial pamphleteers
and for colonial legislatures to express, in every civilized form,
their objections to it. But all this was now over. The Stamp Act had
been discussed; the discussion was ended; the act had been decided on;
it had become a law. Criticism upon it now, especially by a
legislative body, was a very different matter from what criticism upon
it had been, even by the same body, a few months before. Then, the
loyal legislature of Virginia had fittingly spoken out, concerning the
contemplated act, its manly words of disapproval and of protest; but
now that the contemplated act had become an adopted act--had become
the law of the land--could that same legislature again speak even
those same words, without thereby becoming disloyal,--without
venturing a little too near the verge of sedition,--without putting
itself into an attitude, at least, of incipient nullification
respecting a law of the general government?
It is perfectly evident that by all the old leaders of the House at
that moment,--by Peyton Randolph, and Pendleton, and Wythe, and Bland,
and the rest of them,--this question was answered in the negative.
Indeed, it could be answered in no other way. Such being the case, it
followed that, for Virginia and for all her sister colonies, an
entirely new state of things had arisen. A most serious problem
confronted them,--a problem involving, in fact, incalculable
interests. On the subject of immediate concern, they had endeavored,
freely and rightfully, to influence legislation, while that
legislation was in process; but now that this legislation was
accomplished, what were they to do? Were they to submit to it quietly,
trusting to further negotiations for ultimate relief, or were they to
reject it outright, and try to obstruct its execution? Clearly, here
was a very great problem, a problem for statesmanship,--the best
statesmanship anywhere to be had. Clearly this was a time, at any
rate, for wise and experienced men to come to the front; a time, not
for rash counsels, nor for spasmodic and isolated action on the part
of any one colony, but for deliberate and united action on the part of
all the colonies; a time in which all must move forward, or none. But,
thus far, no colony had been heard from: there had not been time. Let
Virginia wait a little. Let her make no mistake; let her not push
forward into any ill-considered and dangerous measure; let her wait,
at least, for some signal of thought or of purpose from her sister
colonies. In the meanwhile, let her old and tried leaders continue to
lead.
Such, apparently, was the state of opinion in the House of Burgesses
when, on the 29th of May, a motion was made and carried, "that the
House resolve itself into a committee of the whole House, immediately
to consider the steps necessary to be taken in consequence of the
resolutions of the House of Commons of Great Britain, relative to the
charging certain stamp duties in the colonies and plantations in
America."[65] On thus going into committee of the whole, to deliberate
on the most difficult and appalling question that, up to that time,
had ever come before an American legislature, the members may very
naturally have turned in expectation to those veteran politicians and
to those able constitutional lawyers who, for many years, had been
accustomed to guide their deliberations, and who, especially in the
last session, had taken charge of this very question of the Stamp
Act. It will not be hard for us to imagine the disgust, the anger,
possibly even the alarm, with which many may have beheld the floor now
taken, not by Peyton Randolph, nor Richard Bland, nor George Wythe,
nor Edmund Pendleton, but by this new and very unabashed member for
the county of Louisa,--this rustic and clownish youth of the terrible
tongue,--this eloquent but presumptuous stripling, who was absolutely
without training or experience in statesmanship, and was the merest
novice even in the forms of the House.
For what precise purpose the new member had thus ventured to take the
floor, was known at the moment of his rising by only two other
members,--George Johnston, the member for Fairfax, and John Fleming,
the member for Cumberland. But the measureless audacity of his
purpose, as being nothing less than that of assuming the leadership of
the House, and of dictating the policy of Virginia in this stupendous
crisis of its fate, was instantly revealed to all, as he moved a
series of resolutions, which he proceeded to read from the blank leaf
of an old law book, and which, probably, were as follows:--
"_Whereas_, the honorable House of Commons in England have
of late drawn into question how far the General Assembly of
this colony hath power to enact laws for laying of taxes and
imposing duties, payable by the people of this, his
majesty's most ancient colony: for settling and ascertaining
the same to all future times, the House of Burgesses of this
present General Assembly have come to the following
resolves:--
"1. _Resolved_, That the first adventurers and settlers of
this, his majesty's colony and dominion, brought with them
and transmitted to their posterity, and all other his
majesty's subjects, since inhabiting in this, his majesty's
said colony, all the privileges, franchises, and immunities
that have at any time been held, enjoyed, and possessed, by
the people of Great Britain.
"2. _Resolved_, That by two royal charters, granted by king
James the First, the colonists aforesaid are declared
entitled to all the privileges, liberties, and immunities of
denizens and natural born subjects, to all intents and
purposes, as if they had been abiding and born within the
realm of England.
"3. _Resolved_, That the taxation of the people by
themselves or by persons chosen by themselves to represent
them, who can only know what taxes the people are able to
bear, and the easiest mode of raising them, and are equally
affected by such taxes themselves, is the distinguishing
characteristic of British freedom, and without which the
ancient constitution cannot subsist.
"4. _Resolved_, That his majesty's liege people of this most
ancient colony have uninterruptedly enjoyed the right of
being thus governed by their own Assembly in the article of
their taxes and internal police, and that the same hath
never been forfeited, or any other way given up, but hath
been constantly recognized by the kings and people of Great
Britain.
"5. _Resolved_, therefore, That the General Assembly of this
colony have the only and sole exclusive 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.
"6. _Resolved_, That his majesty's liege people, the
inhabitants of this colony, are not bound to yield obedience
to any law or ordinance whatever, designed to impose any
taxation whatsoever upon them, other than the laws or
ordinances of the General Assembly aforesaid.
"7. _Resolved_, That any person who shall, by speaking or
writing, assert or maintain that any person or persons,
other than the General Assembly of this colony, have any
right or power to impose or lay any taxation on the people
here, shall be deemed an enemy to his majesty's colony."[66]
No reader will find it hard to accept Jefferson's statement that the
debate on these resolutions was "most bloody." "They were opposed by
Randolph, Bland, Pendleton, Nicholas, Wythe, and all the old members,
whose influence in the House had till then been unbroken."[67] There
was every reason, whether of public policy or of private feeling, why
the old party leaders in the House should now bestir themselves, and
combine, and put forth all their powers in debate, to check, and if
possible to rout and extinguish, this self-conceited but most
dangerous young man. "Many threats were uttered, and much abuse cast
on me," said Patrick himself, long afterward. Logic, learning,
eloquence, denunciation, derision, intimidation, were poured from all
sides of the House upon the head of the presumptuous intruder; but
alone, or almost alone, he confronted and defeated all his assailants.
"Torrents of sublime eloquence from Mr. Henry, backed by the solid
reasoning of Johnston, prevailed."[68]
It was sometime in the course of this tremendous fight, extending
through the 29th and 30th of May, that the incident occurred which has
long been familiar among the anecdotes of the Revolution, and which
may be here recalled as a reminiscence not only of his own consummate
mastery of the situation, but of a most dramatic scene in an
epoch-making debate. Reaching the climax of a passage of fearful
invective, on the injustice and the impolicy of the Stamp Act, he said
in tones of thrilling solemnity, "Caesar had his Brutus; Charles the
First, his Cromwell; and George the Third ['Treason,' shouted the
speaker. 'Treason,' 'treason,' rose from all sides of the room. The
orator paused in stately defiance till these rude exclamations were
ended, and then, rearing himself with a look and bearing of still
prouder and fiercer determination, he so closed the sentence as to
baffle his accusers, without in the least flinching from his own
position,]--and George the Third may profit by their example. If this
be treason, make the most of it."[69]
Of this memorable struggle nearly all other details have perished with
the men who took part in it. After the House, in committee of the
whole, had, on the 29th of May, spent sufficient time in the
discussion, "Mr. Speaker resumed the chair," says the Journal, "and
Mr. Attorney reported that the said committee had had the said matter
under consideration, and had come to several resolutions thereon,
which he was ready to deliver in at the table. Ordered that the said
report be received to-morrow." It is probable that on the morrow the
battle was renewed with even greater fierceness than before. The
Journal proceeds: "May 30. Mr. Attorney, from the committee of the
whole House, reported according to order, that the committee had
considered the steps necessary to be taken in consequence of the
resolutions of the House of Commons of Great Britain, relative to the
charging certain stamp duties in the colonies and plantations in
America, and that they had come to several resolutions thereon, which
he read in his place and then delivered at the table; when they were
again twice read, and agreed to by the House, with some amendments."
Then were passed by the House, probably, the first five resolutions as
offered by Henry in the committee, but "passed," as he himself
afterward wrote, "by a very small majority, perhaps of one or two
only."
Upon this final discomfiture of the old leaders, one of their number,
Peyton Randolph, swept angrily out of the house, and brushing past
young Thomas Jefferson, who was standing in the door of the lobby, he
swore, with a great oath, that he "would have given five hundred
guineas for a single vote."[70] On the afternoon of that day, Patrick
Henry, knowing that the session was practically ended, and that his
own work in it was done, started for his home. He was seen "passing
along Duke of Gloucester Street, ... wearing buckskin breeches, his
saddle bags on his arm, leading a lean horse, and chatting with Paul
Carrington, who walked by his side."[71]
That was on the 30th of May. The next morning, the terrible Patrick
being at last quite out of the way, those veteran lawyers and
politicians of the House, who had found this young protagonist alone
too much for them all put together, made bold to undo the worst part
of the work he had done the day before; they expunged the fifth
resolution. In that mutilated form, without the preamble, and with the
last three of the original resolutions omitted, the first four then
remained on the journal of the House as the final expression of its
official opinion. Meantime, on the wings of the wind, and on the eager
tongues of men, had been borne, past recall, far northward and far
southward, the fiery unchastised words of nearly the entire series, to
kindle in all the colonies a great flame of dauntless purpose;[72]
while Patrick himself, perhaps then only half conscious of the fateful
work he had just been doing, travelled homeward along the dusty
highway, at once the jolliest, the most popular, and the least
pretentious man in all Virginia, certainly its greatest orator,
possibly even its greatest statesman.
FOOTNOTES:
[57] Wirt, 24.
[58] Meade, _Old Families and Churches of Va._ i. 220.
[59] Maury, _Mem. of a Huguenot Fam._ 423.
[60] Wirt, 39-41.
[61] Mem. by Jefferson, in _Hist. Mag._ for 1867, 91.
[62] Jefferson's _Works_, vi. 365.
[63] Mem. by Jefferson, in _Hist. Mag._ for 1867, 91.
[64] These documents are given in full in the Appendix to Wirt's _Life
of Henry_, as Note A.
[65] _Jour. Va. House of Burgesses._
[66] Of this famous series of resolutions, the first five are here
given precisely as they are given in Patrick Henry's own certified
copy still existing in manuscript, and in the possession of Mr. W. W.
Henry; but as that copy evidently contains only that portion of the
series which was reported from the committee of the whole, and was
adopted by the House, I have here printed also what I believe to have
been the preamble, and the last two resolutions in the series as first
drawn and introduced by Patrick Henry. For this portion of the series,
I depend on the copy printed in the _Boston Gazette_, for July 1,
1765, and reprinted in R. Frothingham, _Rise of the Republic_, 180
note. In Wirt's _Life of Henry_, 56-59, is a transcript of the first
five resolutions as given in Henry's handwriting: but it is inaccurate
in two places.
[67] Mem. by Jefferson, in _Hist. Mag._ for 1867, 91.
[68] Mem. by Jefferson, in _Hist. Mag._ for 1867, 91. Henry was aided
in this debate by Robert Munford, also, and by John Fleming: W. W.
Henry, _Life, Corr. and Speeches of P. Henry_, i. 82_n._
[69] For this splendid anecdote we are indebted to Judge John Tyler,
who, then a youth of eighteen, listened to the speech as he stood in
the lobby by the side of Jefferson. Edmund Randolph, in his _History
of Virginia_, still in manuscript, has a somewhat different version of
the language of the orator, as follows: "'Caesar had his Brutus,
Charles the First, his Cromwell, and George the Third'--'Treason,
Sir,' exclaimed the Speaker; to which Mr. Henry instantly replied,
'and George the Third, may he never have either.'" The version
furnished by John Tyler is, of course, the more effective and
characteristic; and as Tyler actually heard the speech, and as,
moreover, his account is confirmed by Jefferson who also heard it, his
account can hardly be set aside by that of Randolph who did not hear
it, and was indeed but a boy of twelve at the time it was made. L. G.
Tyler, _Letters and Times of the Tylers_, i. 56; Wirt, 65.
[70] Mem. by Jefferson, _Hist. Mag._ for 1867, 91.
[71] Campbell, _Hist. Va._ 542.
[72] The subject of the Virginia resolutions presents several
difficulties which I have not thought it best to discuss in the text,
where I have given merely the results of my own rather careful and
repeated study of the question. In brief, my conclusion is this: That
the series as given above, consisting of a preamble and seven
resolutions, is the series as originally prepared by Patrick Henry,
and introduced by him on Wednesday, May 29, in the committee of the
whole, and probably passed by the committee on that day; that at once,
without waiting for the action of the House upon the subject, copies
of the series got abroad, and were soon published in the newspapers of
the several colonies, as though actually adopted by the House; that on
Thursday, May 30, the series was cut down in the House by rejection of
the preamble and the resolutions 6 and 7, and by the adoption of only
the first five as given above; that on the day after that, when
Patrick Henry had gone home, the House still further cut down the
series by expunging the resolution which is above numbered as 5: and
that, many years afterwards, when Patrick Henry came to prepare a copy
for transmission to posterity, he gave the resolutions just as they
stood when adopted by the House on May 30, and not as they stood when
originally introduced by him in committee of the whole on the day
before, nor as they stood when mutilated by the cowardly act of the
House on the day after. It will be noticed, therefore, that the
so-called resolutions of Virginia, which were actually published and
known to the colonies in 1765, and which did so much to fire their
hearts, were not the resolutions as adopted by the House, but were the
resolutions as first introduced, and probably passed, in committee of
the whole; and that even this copy of them was inaccurately given,
since it lacked the resolution numbered above as 3, probably owing to
an error in the first hurried transcription of them. Those who care to
study the subject further will find the materials in _Prior
Documents_, 6, 7; Marshall, _Life of Washington_, i. note iv.;
Frothingham, _Rise of the Republic_, 180 note; Gordon, _Hist. Am.
Rev._, i. 129-139; _Works of Jefferson_, vi. 366, 367; Wirt, _Life of
Henry_, 56-63; Everett, _Life of Henry_, 265-273, with important note
by Jared Sparks in Appendix, 391-398. It may be mentioned that the
narrative given in Burk, _Hist. Va._, iii. 305-310, is untrustworthy.