unmerited. I am, therefore, under increased obligations to promote the safety, dignity, and happiness of the commonwealth.

"While the civil powers are employed in establishing a system of government, liberal, equitable, in every part of which the genius of equal liberty breathes her blessed influence, to you is assigned the glorious task of saving, by your valor, all that is dear to mankind. Go on, Gentlemen, to finish the great work you have so nobly and successfully begun. Convince the tyrants again, that they shall bleed, that America will bleed to her last drop, ere their wicked schemes find success.

"The remembrance of my former connection with you shall be ever dear to me. I honor your profession, I revere that patriot virtue, which, in your conduct, hath produced cheerful obedience, exemplary courage, and contempt of hardship and danger. Be assured, Gentlemen, I shall feel the highest pleasure in embracing every opportunity to contribute to your happiness and welfare; and I trust the day will come, when I shall make one of those that will hail you among the triumphant deliverers of America.

"I have the honor to be, Gentlemen, your most obedient and very humble servant,

"P. HENRY, Jun."

The Governor's palace at Williamsburg, which

had been previously converted into a hospital, was now restored to its original use; and, on the 5th of July, the new Governor and Council took the oaths of office, and entered on the discharge of their duties.

Thus had Henry, in the short space of thirteen years, which had elapsed since he argued the Parsons' Cause, on the 1st of December, 1763, ascended from the position of an obscure advocate and a mere private citizen, through the responsible stations of member of the Assembly, member of Congress, and commander-in-chief of the Virginia forces, to the chief magistracy of the commonwealth. He had risen solely by the effect of talent and character, without any aid from powerful connections, without the use of any courtly arts, without even the indefatigable and persevering industry, which sometimes supplies the absence of almost every other advantage. Jealousy and envy had tried their worst upon him, not without some transient success, but had signally failed in the end, in all their efforts to obstruct his progress and injure his position. The bar-keeper of the little inn at Hanover had become the occupant of the Governor's palace at Williamsburg. The "obscure advocate" of the Parsons' Cause was now the greatest orator in the country, and one of the leading statesmen and magistrates in a new political system, created in

no small degree by his own exertions. The indolent youth, who, at five and twenty, seemed to have lost every chance for success and distinction, had assumed, before forty, an eminent position among those whom Bacon describes as the first class of great men, the founders of nations. The most difficult and important objects of his earthly mission were accomplished. We are now to follow him through the highly honorable but comparatively easy routine of political and professional duty, where we shall find him exhibiting the same talents and virtues which had carried him, with so much brilliancy and success, through the stormy struggles of the revolution.

THE office of Governor of a state, however honorable as a mark of public esteem, is one, in general, of mere routine, and affords but little opportunity for the display of superior talents; especially in the line in which Henry was par

ticularly distinguished, that of forensic and parliamentary eloquence. His term of service in this capacity is accordingly the portion of his life, which furnishes the most scanty supply of materials for the biographer. Soon after his entrance into office, Lord Dunmore evacuated the territory of the state. The military operations, which had been going on during the preceding year, were, in consequence, brought to a close, and were not renewed, to any considerable extent, while Henry was Governor. He had, therefore, no occasion for the exercise of the powers of commander-in-chief, which, as an appendage to the chief magistracy, had now been restored to him by the suffrages of the legislature. In his civil capacity his administration is represented as having been efficient and successful, but undistinguished by any event of extraordinary impor

tance.

At the first session of the legislature after his election, an incident occurred of a singular, rather than very important, character, which seems to require some notice in an account of his life, although, from the means of information now extant and accessible, it is difficult to form a very satisfactory idea of it.

The Assembly met in the autumn of the year 1776, perhaps the most gloomy period of the war. The occupation of New York by the

British troops, and the losses sustained by Washington, in two or three actions in the neighborhood of that city, had, in a great measure, obliterated the recollection of the successes of the preceding year. The extreme difficulty of providing the resources necessary for keeping up even the appearance of opposition to the numerous well-disciplined and well-appointed armies of England began to be apparent. There was no assurance yet of any aid from abroad. Under these disastrous circumstances, a vague imagination seems to have crossed the minds of a portion of the members of the Virginia legislature, that something might be gained by a recourse to the expedient so often adopted by the Romans in cases of great emergency, the concentration of the whole civil and military power of the republic in the hands of a single person, with the title of dictator.

The inutility, in reference to the general situation of the country, of constituting a state dictator, who would have had, as such, no right to exercise his unbounded powers out of the narrow limits of his own dominion, or for any other than state objects, was sufficiently obvious, one would have thought, to satisfy the least judicious person that such a project, if not dangerous, was wholly destitute of plausibility. It is certain, however, that the plan was contemplated, for it became