t
her delegation in the lower house? That, also, was an affair to be
sharply looked to. Above all things, James Madison, as the supposed
foe of amendments, was to be prevented, if possible, from winning an
election. Therefore the committee of the House of Delegates, which was
appointed for the very purpose, among other things, of dividing the
State into its ten congressional districts, so carved out those
districts as to promote the election of the friends of the good cause,
and especially to secure, as was hoped, the defeat of its great enemy.
Of this committee Patrick Henry was not a member; but as a majority of
its members were known to be his devoted followers, very naturally
upon him, at the time, was laid the burden of the blame for
practising this ignoble device in politics,--a device which, when
introduced into Massachusetts several years afterward, also by a
Revolutionary father, came to be christened with the satiric name of
"gerrymandering." Surely it was a rare bit of luck, in the case of
Patrick Henry, that the wits of Virginia did not anticipate the wits
of Massachusetts by describing this trick as "henrymandering;" and
that he thus narrowly escaped the ugly immortality of having his name
handed down from age to age in the coinage of a base word which should
designate a base thing,--one of the favorite, shabby manoeuvres of
less scrupulous American politicians.[411]

Thus, however, within four weeks from the opening of the session, he
had succeeded in pressing through the legislature, in the exact form
he wished, all these measures for giving effect to Virginia's demand
upon Congress for amendments. This being accomplished, he withdrew
from the service of the House for the remainder of the session,
probably on account of the great urgency of his professional
engagements at that time. The journal of the House affords us no trace
of his presence there after the 18th of November; and although the
legislature continued in session until the 13th of December, its
business did not digress beyond local topics. To all these facts,
rather bitter allusion is made in a letter to the governor of New
Hampshire, written from Mount Vernon, on the 31st of January, 1789, by
the private secretary of Washington, Tobias Lear, who thus reflected,
no doubt, the mood of his chief:--

"Mr. Henry, the leader of the opposition in this State,
finding himself beaten off the ground by fair argument in
the state conven