little or no figure during the civil days of the court; but on the eighth day he was the monarch of the bar. These causes brought him into direct collision with Mr. John Randolph, who had now succeeded Peyton as the attorney-general.

Mr. Randolph, it has been remarked, was, in person and manners among the most elegant gentlemen in the colony, and in his profession one of the most splendid ornaments of the bar. He was a polite scholar, as well as a profound lawyer, and his eloquence also was of a high order. His voice, action, style, were stately, and uncommonly impressive; but gigantic as he was in relation to other men, he was but a pigmy, when opposed in a criminal trial to the arch magician, Henry. In those cases Mr. Henry was perfectly irresistible. He adapted himself, without effort, to the character of the cause: seized with the quickness of intuition, its defensible point, and never permitted the jury to lose sight of it.

Sir Joshua Reynolds has said of Titian, that, by a few strokes of his pencil, he knew how to mark the image and character of whatever object he attempted; and produced by this means a truer representation than any of his predecessors, who finished every hair. In like manner, Mr. Henry, by a few master-strokes upon the evidence, could in general stamp upon the cause whatever image or character he pleased; and convert it into tragedy or comedy, at his sovereign will, and with a power which no efforts of his adversary could counteract.

He never wearied the jury by a dry and minute analysis of the evidence; he did not expend his strength in finishing the hairs; he produced all his high effect by those rare mastertouches, and by the resistless skill with which, in a very few words, he could mould and colour the prominent facts of a cause to his purpose. He had wonderful address, too, in leading off the minds of his hearers from the contemplation of unfavourable points, if at any time they were too stubborn to yield to his power of transformation. He beguiled the hearer so far from them, as to diminish them by distance, and soften, if not entirely cast into shade, their too strong natural colours. At this distance, too, he had a better opportunity of threwing upon them a false light, by an apparently casual ray of refraction from other points in the evidence, whose powers no man better knew how to array and concentrate, in order to disguise or eclipse an obnoxious fact.

It required a mind of uncommon vigilance, and most intractable temper, to resist this charm with which he decoyed away his hearers; it demanded a rapidity of penetration which is rarely, if ever, to be found in the jury-box, to detect the intellectual juggle by which he spread his nets around them; it

called for a stubbornness and obduracy of soul which do not exist, to sit unmoved under the pictures of horror, or of pity which started from his canvass.

They might resolve, if they pleased, to decide the cause against him, and to disregard everything which he could urge in the defence of his client. But it was all in vain. Some feint, in an unexpected direction, threw them off their guard, and they were gone; some happy phrase, burning from the soul; some image fresh from Nature's mint, and bearing her own beautiful and genuine impress, struck them with delightful surprise, and melted them into conciliation; and conciliation toward Mr. Henry, was victory inevitable. In short, he understood the human character so perfectly; knew so well all its strength and all its weaknesses, together with every path and by-way which winds around to the citadel of the best fortified heart and mind, that he never failed to take them, either by stratagem or storm. Hence he was, beyond doubt, the ablest defender of criminals in Virginia, and will probably never be equalled again.

It has been observed, that Mr. Henry's knowledge of the common law was extremely defective; but his attendance upon the general court was calculated to cure that defect, in a considerable degree. All legal questions of magnitude or difficulty came before that tribunal, either originally or by appeal; and he had continual opportunities of hearing them discussed in the ablest manner, by the brightest luminaries of the American bar.

His was a mind on which nothing was lost; on which no useful seed could be cast without shooting into all the luxuriance of which its nature was susceptible. Thus improving every hint, and ramifying every principle which was brought into his view, there is reason to believe that a few years must have made him not only a master of the general canons of property, but of the modifications and exceptions of more frequent occurrence, by which those canons are restrained and governed.

In support of this conclusion, I find that in January, seventeen hundred and seventy-three, Robert C. Nicholas, who had enjoyed the first practice at the bar, and who, by virtue of his office of treasurer, was forced to relinquish that practice, committed, by a public advertisement, his unfinished business to Mr. Henry; a step which a man so remarkably scrupulous in the discharge of every moral duty would not have taken, had there been any incompetency on the part of his substitute.

The British ministry, however, did not permit Mr. Henry to waste himself in forensic exertions. The joy of the Amer

icans, on the repeal of the stamp-act, was very short-lived. That measure had not been, on the part of the British parlia ment, a voluntary sacrifice to truth and right. The ministry and their friends disavowed this ground; and were forward on every occasion, to convince the colonies that they had nothing to expect, either from the clemency or the magnanimity of the British cabinet.

Thus on a question of supplies for the army, in the session of parliament of seventeen hundred and sixty-six and seven, a motion was made in the house of commons, that the revenues arising and to arise in America, be applied to subsisting the troops now there, and those other regiments which it is proposed to send; in support of which, that brilliant political meteor, Charles Townsend, urged, among other things, "the propriety of more troops being sent to America, and of their being quartered in the large towns."

He said, that he had a plan preparing, which he would lay before the house, for the raising of supplies in America. That the legislative authority of Great Britain extended to every colony in every particular. That the distinction between internal and external taxes was nonsense; and that he voted for the repeal of the stamp-act, not because it was not a good act, but because, at that time, there appeared a propriety in repealing it. He added, that he repeated the sentence, that the galleries might hear him, and after that, he did not expect to have his statue erected in America: in all which, Mr. Grenville joined him fully. This temper soon manifested itself in open acts, and turned the late joy of the colonies into mourning.

The first obnoxious measure was a stern demand of satisfac tion from the legislatures of the colonies, for the injuries which had been done to the stamp-officers and their adherents. The legislature of Massachusetts, of whom this demand was first made, very respectfully, and with good reason, questioned the propriety and justice of taxing the whole colony for the excesses of a few individuals, which they had neither prompted nor approved; for the sake of peace, however, and in the spirit of accommodation, that satisfaction was given; but they annexed to their vote of satisfaction a grant of pardon to the rioters; and, in England, according to the usual courtesy of that country, nothing was said of the satisfaction, while the pardon was treated as a most insolent and impudent usurpation of the royal authority.

The next step was that suggested by Mr. Townsend, of quartering large bodies of troops upon the chief towns in the colonies, and demanding of the several colonial legislatures a provision for their comfortable support and accommodation. A

measure more replete with exasperation could scarcely have been devised. The very presence of those myrmidons was an insult; for it was a direct reflection on the fidelity of the colonists. Their object was perfectly understood: it was to curb the just and honourable spirit of the people; to dragoon them into submission to the parliamentary claim of taxation, and reduce them to the condition of vassals, governed by the right of conquest. The rudeness of the soldiery, too, was well calculated to keep up and increase the irritation, which their presence alone would have been sufficient to excite.

In Boston, they were in the habit of stopping the most respectable citizens in the streets, and compelling them to answer insulting inquiries, or committing them to confinement on their refusal, assigning, as the ground of their conduct, that the town was a garrisoned town. In New York, they provoked a contest with the people, by making war upon a liberty-pole, which was the first object of their earthly devotions, and which the soldiers continually destroyed or attempted to destroy, as soon as it could be replaced. And, as if all this insult and humiliation were not enough, the colonies were to be constrained to tax themselves, to foster and cherish those instruments of their degradation.

The legislature of New York, in a tone at least sufficiently submissive for the occasion, and on the false ground of the inability of the colony, begged to be excused from making the provision. For this high offence, the legislative power of that colony was abolished by act of parliament, until they should submit to make the provision which was required: and they did submit.

A body of British troops, alleged to have been driven by stress of weather into Boston, in the recess of the colonial legislature, had been provided for out of the public moneys, by the governor and his council. The legislature met shortly afterward, and remonstrated against this unconstitutional appropriation, with that Roman firmness and dignity which marked the character of Massachusetts in every stage of the contest. But Governor Bernard, highly indignant at what he affected to consider as presumption, made such a communication upon the subject to the British court, as could have had, and could have been designed to have, no other effect than to widen the breach, and inflame more highly those animosities which already required no new aggravation.

These military preparations were well understood to be the harbingers of some unconstitutional act, the execution of which they were necessary to enforce. Why those preparations were restricted to the northern states, and more particularly to Mas

sachusetts, has never been satisfactorily explained. There was no colony which resisted with more firmness and constancy the pretensions of the British parliament than that of Virginia; yet no military force was thought necessary, during the lives of the governors Fauquier and Bottetourt, to keep down the spirit of rebellion in this colony.

A solution of the difficulty may perhaps be found in the character of the different governors. Virginia had the good fortune, during this period, to be governed by enlightened and amiable men, who saw and did justice to the motives and measure of resistance which was meditated; who were both able and willing to distinguish between reason and force, between remonstrance and rebellion; who perceived with pleasure, the spirit of genuine and unaffected loyalty and affection for the parent-country, which mingled itself with every complaint; and who, in their communications to the British court, were disposed rather "to extenuate," than "to set down aught in malice." Whereas Bernard, the governor of Massachusetts, was the fit instrument and apt representative of the masters whom he served: for he had all their pride and unfeeling insolence, and seems to have enjoyed a kind of fiend-like pleasure, in rendering his province hateful at home, by the most virulent misrepresentations; and in drawing down upon her the accumulated curses and oppressions of the parent-country.*

These preparatory steps having been taken, an act of parliament was passed, imposing certain duties on glass, white and red lead, painters' colours, tea, and paper, imported into the colonies. This act was to take effect on the twentieth of November, seventeen hundred and sixty-seven; and, to insure its operation, another act authorized the king to appoint a board of trade to reside in the colonies, and to instruct them at his pleasure and without limits, as to the mode of executing their duties under this law. A commission accordingly issued, by which the commissioners were armed with a power of search and seizure, at their discretion; with authority to call for aid upon the naval and military establishments within the colony; and with an exemption from prosecution or responsibility be

* Extract of a letter, dated London, June fifth, seventeen hundred and seventy: "The people of England now curse Governor Bernard, as bitterly as those of America. Bernard was drove out of the Smyrna coffee-house, not many days since, by General Oglethorpe, who told him he was a dirty, factious scoundrel, and smelled cursed strong of the hangman; that he had better leave the room, as unworthy to mix with gentlemen of character, but that he would give him the satisfaction of following him to the door, had he any thing to reply. The governor left the house like a guilty coward."-Pennsylvania Gazette, August 30th, 1770.