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"naitral parts are better than all the larnin on airth;" but these stories are extremely doubtful. It is incredi ble that a Latin scholar and reader of " Butler's Analogy," one of the abstrusest of books, should have employed such expressions. He no doubt used Virginianisms; if he used vulgarisms it was, probably, in a spirit of humor. The fact remains, however, that he was of rustic address, and "ungainly" in person; and that no one acquainted with him had the least suspicion that under this unpromising exterior lay the immense genius for oratory which was to shape the history of the North American continent.

This was revealed for the first time in the “Parsons' Cause" in December, 1763; a suit brought by a minister of the Church of England for arrearages of salary. In a year of failure in the tobacco crop the Virginia Burgesses had enacted that all debts payable in that commodity, then a species of currency, might be paid in money at the rate of twopence for the pound of tobacco. The blow was heavy to the clergy, whose legal salary of 16,000 pounds of tobacco was worth at the time about sixpence a pound; and the legality of the Act was referred to the King, who decided against it. The clergy were therefore entitled to their tobacco, or its value, and nothing was left but the question of the amounts to be paid them as damages. Mr. Maury, a minister of Hanover, brought suit to recover his own. There was no question of law to be settled by the Court. The King had decided the law, and the counsel for the defendants, the Hanover collectors, retired from the case. There was a very prevalent desire, however, that something should be said on the question, and Henry was employed to oppose "the parsons."

ance.

A remarkable scene followed. Henry rose to address the jury in presence of a great crowd. He had never before spoken in public, and at first his voice faltered. He hung his head and seemed to be overwhelmed, but soon a strange transformation took place in his appearHis head rose haughtily erect and as he proceeded his delivery grew passionate. He bitterly denounced the clergy, a number of whom retired in indignation from the Court-house; and stigmatized the King, who had supported their demand, as a tyrant who had forfeited all claim to obedience. At this the counsel for the plaintiff cried, "The gentleman has spoken treabut Henry's language only grew more violent. The crowd around him swayed to and fro, in evident sympathy with the speaker, who, with passionate vehemence, insisted that the Burgesses of Virginia were "the only authority which could give force to the laws for the government of this colony." The words were treason, since they defied the royal authority; and when the jury retired, the crowd was in the wildest commotion. Five minutes afterwards the jury returned with a verdict fixing the plaintiff's damages at "one penny," and a loud shout of applause followed. The jury, like the young orator, had defied the will of the King; and when Court adjourned, Patrick Henry was caught up and borne on the shoulders of the excited crowd, around the Court green, in triumph.

Such was the famous "Parsons' Cause." An obscure lawsuit had assumed the proportions of an historic event. A great assemblage in one of the most important counties of Virginia had wildly cheered Henry's denunciations of the Crown, and his demand that the authority of the Burgesses of Virginia should take precedence of the authority of the King of England.

III.

THE STAMPS.

THIS affair of the outposts immediately preceded the pitched battle. England and the Colonies were now to come to open quarrel on a vital issue. The war with France had inflicted on Great Britain a great incubus of debt. A part of this debt had been incurred in the defense of the Americans; now Parliament asserted the plausible right to raise revenue, by imposing taxes on the Colonies, for the payment of their proportion of it.

When it became known in 1764 that this right was claimed, there was an outburst of indignation. In Virginia the universal public sentiment was that the claim was illegal and oppressive. From the earliest times. the House of Burgesses had regulated the affairs of Virginia; and their right to do so had been formally recognized by Charles II., who had declared, under the privy seal in 1676, that "taxes ought not to be laid on the inhabitants and proprietors of the colony but by the common consent of the General Assembly." Thus the right to tax the Colonies without their consent, if ever asserted, had been authoritatively disclaimed. All, in fact, was against it: the old "Constitution of Government " of the time of James I.; the recognition of the Assembly as a law-making power by Charles I.; and the formal abandonment of any such claim by Charles II. When, therefore, the advisers of George III. proclaimed the new doctrine, they did so in violation of the express engagements of his predecessors, and substituted his will for the chartered rights of the Virginia people.

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The question was whether the people were going to submit. The navigation laws, an external tax, had been acquiesced in under protest, but the new claim was different; the impost was to be direct and galling. The most daring of the English statesmen had hitherto shrunk from it. Walpole had declared that it was a measure too hazardous for him to venture upon; "I have Old England set against me," he said, "and do you think that I will have New England likewise?" But times and men had changed now. The new Ministers were less cautious, and openly asserted the obnoxious claim. The British Empire was the British Empire, and the House of Commons was to make laws to govern it.

Peace was declared between England and France in 1763, and in 1764 the new doctrine was broached, and the right of direct taxation asserted. In the next year the matter took shape. Mr. Grenville brought in a bill which passed the Commons by a vote of five to one: met with no opposition in the Lords; and (March, 1765), the King approved it, and it became a law. This was the now famous "Stamp Act." By this law all instruments of writing used in the transaction of business in the Colonies were declared to be thenceforth null and

void, unless executed on stamped paper paying a revenue to the Crown.

When the Virginia House of Burgesses assembled in the spring of 1765, they were met by a plain question: Were they to submit to the new law or resist it as an invasion of right? The decision must be prompt. The stamps were coming, and action must be taken at once.

The Burgesses met in the "Old Capitol" at Williamsburg, and the spectacle was imposing. The Speaker sat on a dais under a red canopy supported by a gilded

rod, and the clerk beneath with the mace lying on the table before him to indicate that the Assembly was in full session. The members, ranged in long rows, were the most eminent men of Virginia, and evidently approached the great business before them with deep feeling. The issue was serious. On one side was submission to wrong; on the other collision with England. The old attachment, to what was called "Home," was still exceedingly strong. It had been shaken but not destroyed, and was still a controlling sentiment. To openly resist the Crown would be to invite coercion : and that meant war, which would be deplorable. Even if the Colonies were successful, separation from the mother-land would probably follow; and not one Virginian in ten thousand desired such a separation. The general sentiment was in favor of further remonstrances and memorials; but a considerable party opposed this policy as behind the times. It was said that Parliament meant to crush the liberties of the people; that the King was their enemy; and that to approach either King or Parliament with honeyed words and professions of attachment would be hypocrisy. The only course to pursue now was to speak out plainly, not in the tone of suppliants but in the voice of men demanding their rights and determined to have them.

In the midst of the general doubt and hesitation Patrick Henry, who had been elected a Burgess from Louisa County, rose and offered his celebrated resolutions, which he had written on a blank leaf torn from an old law-book. The resolutions were five in number, and presented in admirably clear terms the whole case against the Stamp Act. The points insisted upon were that the first Virginia settlers had brought with them

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