rly always a sharp
hostility, significantly asked Edmund Pendleton to tell him "where the
resolutions proposed by Mr. Henry really originated." _Letters and
Other Writings of Madison_, i. 515. Edmund Randolph is said to have
asserted that they were written by William Fleming; a statement of
which Jefferson remarked, "It is to me incomprehensible." _Works_, vi.
484. But to Jefferson's own testimony on the same subject, I would
apply the same remark. In his Memorandum, he says without hesitation
that the resolutions "were drawn up by George Johnston, a lawyer of
the Northern Neck, a very able, logical, and correct speaker." _Hist.
Mag._ for 1867, 91. But in another paper, written at about the same
time, Jefferson said: "I can readily enough believe these resolutions
were written by Mr. Henry himself. They bear the stamp of his mind,
strong, without precision. That they were written by Johnston, who
seconded them, was only the rumor of the day, and very possibly
unfounded." _Works_, vi. 484. In the face of all this tissue of rumor,
guesswork, and self-contradiction, the deliberate statement of Patrick
Henry himself that he wrote the five resolutions referred to by him,
and that he wrote them "alone, unadvised, and unassisted," must close
the discussion.

[84] Verified from the original manuscript, now in possession of Mr.
W. W. Henry.

[85] Cited by Sparks, in Everett, _Life of Henry_, 392.

[86] Perry, _Hist. Coll._ i. 514, 515.

[87] _Works of John Adams_, ii. 249.

[88] _Works of Jefferson_, vi. 368.

[89] _Life of Henry_, 66.

CHAPTER VII

STEADY WORK

From the close of Patrick Henry's first term in the Virginia House of
Burgesses, in the spring of 1765, to the opening of his first term in
the Continental Congress, in the fall of 1774, there stretches a
period of about nine years, which, for the purposes of our present
study, may be rapidly glanced at and passed by.

In general, it may be described as a period during which he had
settled down to steady work, both as a lawyer and as a politician. The
first five years of his professional life had witnessed his advance,
as we have seen, by strides which only genius can make, from great
obscurity to great distinction; his advance from a condition of
universal failure to one of success so universal that his career may
be said to have become within that brief period solidly established.
At the bar, upon the hustings, in the legislature, as a master of