in them anything by which to account for the
opposition which they are known to have met with in that assemblage.
For that assemblage, it must be remembered, was not the Virginia
legislature: it was a mere convention, and a revolutionary convention
at that, gathered in spite of the objections of Lord Dunmore,
representing simply the deliberate purpose of those Virginians who
meant not finally to submit to unjust laws; some of its members,
likewise, being under express instructions from their constituents to
take measures for the immediate and adequate military organization of
the colony. Not a man, probably, was sent to that convention, not a
man surely would have gone to it, who was not in substantial sympathy
with the prevailing revolutionary spirit.

Of course, even they who were in sympathy with that spirit might have
objected to Patrick Henry's resolutions, had those resolutions been
marked by any startling novelty in doctrine, or by anything extreme or
violent in expression. But, plainly, they were neither extreme nor
violent; they were not even novel. They contained nothing essential
which had not been approved, in almost the same words, more than three
months before, by similar conventions in Maryland and in Delaware;
which had not been approved, in almost the same words, many weeks
before, by county conventions in Virginia,--in one instance, by a
county convention presided over by Washington himself; which had not
been approved, in other language, either weeks or months before, by
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and other
colonies; which was not sanctioned by the plainest prudence on the
part of all persons who intended to make any further stand whatsoever
against the encroachments of Parliament. It is safe to say that no man
who had within him enough of the revolutionary spirit to have prompted
his attendance at a revolutionary convention could have objected to
any essential item in Patrick Henry's resolutions.

Why, then, were they objected to? Why was their immediate passage
resisted? The official journal of the convention throws no light upon
the question: it records merely the adoption of the resolutions, and
is entirely silent respecting any discussion that they may have
provoked. Thirty years afterward, however, St. George Tucker, who,
though not a member of this convention, had yet as a visitor watched
its proceedings that day, gave from memory some account of them; and
to him