pon her colonies.

[Sidenote: 1765--The opposition to the Stamp Act]

If Massachusetts was the first to protest with no uncertain voice
against the Stamp Act, other colonies were prompt to follow her
example, and to prove that they possessed sons no less patriotic.
Virginia was as vehement and as vigorous in opposition as
Massachusetts. One speech in the Virginia House of Burgesses made the
name of Patrick Henry famous. Patrick Henry was a young man who tried
many things and failed in them before he found in the practice of the
law the appointed task for his rare gifts of reasoning and of
eloquence. A speech in Hanover Court House in defence of the people
against a suit of the parish clergy gave him sudden fame. As grave of
face as Samuel Adams, as careless of his attire, tall and lean, stamped
with the seal of the speaker and the thinker, Patrick Henry at
nine-and-twenty was already a very different man from the youth who
five years earlier seemed destined to be but a Jack of all trades and
master of none, an unsuccessful trader, an unsuccessful farmer, whose
chief accomplishments in life were hunting and fishing, dancing and
riding. The debate on the Stamp Act gave him a great opportunity. As
he addressed his words of warning to the stubborn sovereign across the
sea his passion seemed to get the better of his prudence and to tempt
him into menace. "Caesar," he said, "had his Brutus, Charles the First
his Cromwell." He was going on to say "and George the Third," when he
was interrupted by angry cries of "Treason!" from the loyalists among
his hearers. Patrick Henry waited until the noise subsided, and then
quietly completed his sentence, "George the Third may profit by their
example. If this be treason, make the most of it." The words were not
treasonable, {91} but they were revolutionary. They served to carry
the name of Patrick Henry to every corner of the continent and across
the Atlantic. They made him a hero and idol in the eyes of the
colonists; they made him a rebel in the eyes of the Court at St.
James's.

Massachusetts had set an example which Virginia had bettered;
Massachusetts was now to better Virginia. If Virginia, prompted by
Patrick Henry, declared that she alone had the right to tax her own
citizens, Massachusetts, inspired by James Otis, summoned a congress of
deputies from all the colonial assemblies to meet in common
consultation upon the common danger. This congress, the first but