court. From
about the time of his speech in "the Parsons' Cause," as his fee-books
show, his practice became enormous, and so continued to the end of his
days, excepting when public duties or broken health compelled him to
turn away clients. Thus it is apparent that, while the young lawyer
did not attain anything more than local professional reputation until
his speech against the parsons, he did acquire a very considerable
practice almost immediately after his admission to the bar. Moreover,
so far from his being a needy dependent on his father-in-law for the
first two or three years, the same quiet records show that his
practice enabled him, even during that early period, to assist his
father-in-law by an important advance of money.

The fiction that Patrick Henry, during the first three or four years
of his nominal career as a lawyer, was a briefless barrister,--earning
his living at the bar of a tavern rather than at the bar of
justice,--is the very least of those disparaging myths, which, through
the frailty of human memory and the bitterness of partisan ill-will,
have been permitted to settle upon his reputation. Certainly, no one
would think it discreditable, or even surprising, if Patrick Henry,
while still a very young lawyer, should have had little or no
practice, provided only that, when the practice did come, the young
lawyer had shown himself to have been a good one. It is precisely
this honor which, during the past seventy years, has been denied him.
Upon the evidence thus far most prominently before the public, one is
compelled to conceive of him as having been destitute of nearly all
the qualifications of a good lawyer, excepting those which give
success with juries, particularly in criminal practice: he is
represented as ignorant of the law, indolent, and grossly negligent of
business,--with nothing, in fact, to give him the least success in the
profession but an abnormal and quite unaccountable gift of persuasion
through speech.

Referring to this period of his life, Wirt says:--

"Of the science of law he knew almost nothing; of the
practical part he was so wholly ignorant that he was not
only unable to draw a declaration or a plea, but incapable,
it is said, of the most common or simple business of his
profession, even of the mode of ordering a suit, giving a
notice, or making a motion in court."[29]

This conception of Henry's professional character, to which Wirt