from their
allegiance to the king. Mr. Cootes, merchant on James River, on coming
out of the court, said that he would have given a considerable sum out
of his own pocket rather than his friend Patrick should have been guilty
of treason, but little, if any, less criminal than that which had
brought Simon Lord Lovat to the block. The clergy and their adherents
deemed Henry's speech as exceeding the most inflammatory and seditious
harangues of the Roman tribunes of the common people. The Rev. Mr.
Boucher, rector of Hanover Parish, in the County of King George,
accounted one of the best preachers of his time, said: "The assembly was
found to have done and the clergy to have suffered wrong. The aggrieved
may, and we hope often do, forgive, but it has been observed that
aggressors rarely forgive. Ever since this controversy, your clergy have
experienced every kind of discourtesy and discouragement."[518:A]

It was evident that the municipal affairs of Virginia could not be
rightly managed, or safely interfered with, by a slow-moving government
three thousand miles distant. The act of 1758 appears to have been
grounded on humanity, the law of nature, and necessity.

Henry's speech in "the Parsons' Cause," and the verdict of the jury, may
be said in a certain sense to have been the commencement of the
Revolution in Virginia; and Hanover, where dissent had appeared, was the
starting-point. Wirt's description of the scene has rendered it classic,
and notwithstanding the faults of a style sometimes too florid and
extravagant, there is a charm in the biography of Henry which stamps it
as one of those works of genius which "men will not willingly let die."

FOOTNOTES:

[507:A] Colonel Richard Bland's Letter to the Clergy.

[508:A] Memoirs of Huguenot Family, 402.

[508:B] Journals of the house of burgesses thus marked are in the
possession of Mr. Grigsby.

[509:A] Colonel Bland's Letter to the Clergy, 6.

[509:B] Hening, vii. 240.

[509:C] Ibid., vi. 568.

[509:D] Hist. of Va., iii. 302.

[509:E] See also A. H. Everett's Life of Patrick Henry, in Sparks'
American Biog., (second series,) i. 230.

[510:A] Burnaby's Travels.

[510:B] Bland's Letter to the Clergy, 14.

[512:A] The record of this convention of the clergy, which is probably
in the archives of the See of London, would be extremely interesting at
the present day.

[512:B] Robinson.

[512:C] Travels through the Middle Settlements in North America in t