, who, however, was compelled to decline it.
Afterward, he offered it to Patrick Henry, who accepted it; and
accordingly, by public advertisement, Nicholas informed his clients
that he had committed to Patrick Henry the further protection of their
interests,[93]--a perfectly conclusive proof, it should seem, of the
real respect in which Patrick Henry's qualifications as a lawyer were
then held, not only by the public but by the profession. Certainly
such evidence as this can hardly be set aside by the supposed
recollections of one old gentleman, of broken memory and unbroken
resentment, who long afterward tried to convince Wirt that, even at
the period now in question, Patrick Henry was "wofully deficient as a
lawyer," was unable to contend with his associates "on a mere question
of law," and was "so little acquainted with the fundamental principles
of his profession ... as not to be able to see the remote bearings of
the reported cases."[94] The expressions here quoted are, apparently,
Wirt's own paraphrase of the statements which were made to him by
Jefferson, and which, in many of their details, can now be proved, on
documentary evidence, to be the work of a hand that had forgot, not
indeed its cunning, but at any rate its accuracy.

As to the political history of Patrick Henry during this period, it
may be easily described. The doctrine on which he had planted himself
by his resolutions in 1765, namely, that the parliamentary taxation of
unrepresented colonies is unconstitutional, became the avowed doctrine
of Virginia, and of all her sister colonies; and nearly all the men
who, in the House of Burgesses, had, for reasons of propriety, or of
expediency, or of personal feeling, opposed the passage of his
resolutions, soon took pains to make it known to their constituents
that their opposition had not been to the principle which those
resolutions expressed. Thenceforward, among the leaders in Virginian
politics, there was no real disagreement on the fundamental question;
only such disagreement touching methods as must always occur between
spirits who are cautious and spirits who are bold. Chief among the
former were Pendleton, Wythe, Bland, Peyton Randolph, and Nicholas. In
the van of the latter always stood Patrick Henry, and with him
Jefferson, Richard Henry Lee, the Pages, and George Mason. But between
the two groups, after all, was surprising harmony, which is thus
explained by one who in all that business had a g