word has when
applied, for example, to the speeches in Livy and in Thucydides, or in
Botta. In the first place, Wirt's version certainly gives the
substance of the speech as actually made by Patrick Henry on the
occasion named; and, for the form of it, Wirt seems to have gathered
testimony from all available living witnesses, and then, from such
sentences or snatches of sentences as these witnesses could remember,
as well as from his own conception of the orator's method of
expression, to have constructed the version which he has handed down
to us. Even in that case, it is probably far more accurate and
authentic than are most of the famous speeches attributed to public
characters before reporters' galleries were opened, and before the art
of reporting was brought to its present perfection.

Returning, now, from this long account of Patrick Henry's most
celebrated speech, to the assemblage in which it was made, it remains
to be mentioned that the resolutions, as offered by Patrick Henry,
were carried; and that the committee, called for by those resolutions,
to prepare a plan for "embodying, arming, and disciplining" the
militia,[162] was at once appointed. Of this committee Patrick Henry
was chairman; and with him were associated Richard Henry Lee,
Nicholas, Harrison, Riddick, Washington, Stephen, Lewis, Christian,
Pendleton, Jefferson, and Zane. On the following day, Friday, the 24th
of March, the committee brought in its report, which was laid over for
one day, and then, after some amendment, was unanimously adopted.

The convention did not close its labors until Monday, the 27th of
March. The contemporaneous estimate of Patrick Henry, not merely as a
leader in debate, but as a constitutional lawyer, and as a man of
affairs, may be partly gathered from the fact of his connection with
each of the two other important committees of this convention,--the
committee "to inquire whether his majesty may of right advance the
terms of granting lands in this colony,"[163] on which his associates
were the great lawyers, Bland, Jefferson, Nicholas, and Pendleton; and
the committee "to prepare a plan for the encouragement of arts and
manufactures in this colony,"[164] on which his associates were
Nicholas, Bland, Mercer, Pendleton, Cary, Carter of Stafford,
Harrison, Richard Henry Lee, Clapham, Washington, Holt, and Newton.

FOOTNOTES:

[136] For an example of such overstatement, see Wirt, 114-123. See,
also, the damaging co