anxieties to his two most congenial political
friends in Congress. To Richard Henry Lee he wrote:--

"The grand work of forming a constitution for Virginia is
now before the convention, where your love of equal liberty
and your skill in public counsels might so eminently serve
the cause of your country. Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I fear
too great a bias to aristocracy prevails among the opulent.
I own myself a democratic on the plan of our admired friend,
J. Adams, whose pamphlet I read with great pleasure. A
performance from Philadelphia is just come here, ushered in,
I'm told, by a colleague of yours, B----, and greatly
recommended by him. I don't like it. Is the author a Whig?
One or two expressions in the book make me ask. I wish to
divide you, and have you here to animate, by your manly
eloquence, the sometimes drooping spirits of our country,
and in Congress to be the ornament of your native country,
and the vigilant, determined foe of tyranny. To give you
colleagues of kindred sentiments, is my wish. I doubt you
have them not at present. A confidential account of the
matter to Colonel Tom,[245] desiring him to use it according
to his discretion, might greatly serve the public and
vindicate Virginia from suspicions. Vigor, animation, and
all the powers of mind and body must now be summoned and
collected together into one grand effort. Moderation,
falsely so called, hath nearly brought on us final ruin. And
to see those, who have so fatally advised us, still guiding,
or at least sharing, our public counsels, alarms me."[246]

On the same day, he wrote as follows to John Adams:--

WILLIAMSBURG, May 20, 1776.

MY DEAR SIR,--Your favor, with the pamphlet, came safe to
hand. I am exceedingly obliged to you for it; and I am not
without hopes it may produce good here, where there is among
most of our opulent families a strong bias to aristocracy. I
tell my friends you are the author. Upon that supposition, I
have two reasons for liking the book. The sentiments are
precisely the same I have long since taken up, and they come
recommended by you. Go on, my dear friend, to assail the
strongholds of tyranny; and in whatever form oppression may
be found, may those talents and that firmness, which have
achiev