her men, could
think of inviting into his family an enemy from whose insults and
injuries he had suffered so severely?"

In reply to this appeal, Patrick Henry declared that the question
before them was not one of personal feeling; that it was a national
question; and that in discussing it they should be willing to
sacrifice all personal resentments, all private wrongs. He then
proceeded to unfold the proposition that America had everything out of
which to make a great nation--except people.

"Your great want, sir, is the want of men; and these you
must have, and will have speedily, if you are wise. Do you
ask how you are to get them? Open your doors, sir, and they
will come in. The population of the Old World is full to
overflowing; that population is ground, too, by the
oppressions of the governments under which they live. Sir,
they are already standing on tiptoe upon their native
shores, and looking to your coasts with a wishful and
longing eye.... But gentlemen object to any accession from
Great Britain, and particularly to the return of the British
refugees. Sir, I feel no objection to the return of those
deluded people. They have, to be sure, mistaken their own
interests most wofully, and most wofully have they suffered
the punishment due to their offences. But the relations
which we bear to them and to their native country are now
changed. Their king hath acknowledged our independence. The
quarrel is over. Peace hath returned, and found us a free
people. Let us have the magnanimity, sir, to lay aside our
antipathies and prejudices, and consider the subject in a
political light. Those are an enterprising, moneyed people.
They will be serviceable in taking off the surplus produce
of our lands, and supplying us with necessaries during the
infant state of our manufactures. Even if they be inimical
to us in point of feeling and principle, I can see no
objection, in a political view, in making them tributary to
our advantage. And, as I have no prejudices to prevent my
making this use of them, so, sir, I have no fear of any
mischief that they can do us. Afraid of them? What, sir
[said he, rising to one of his loftiest attitudes, and
assuming a look of the most indignant and sovereign
contempt], shall we, who have laid the proud British lion at
our feet, now