ed him to be Chief Justice of
the Supreme Court of the United States; and he was a reading man, too, a
scholar, deeply learned, and he printed at his own expense Soame Jenyns'
work upon the internal evidence of Christianity. He was a profound
student, not of many books, but of a few books and of human nature. He
first challenged Great Britain by his resolutions against the Stamp act
in 1765, and then it was that Virginia, apropos of what you said to-day
in your admirable discourse--I address myself to Judge Cooley--Virginia
was the first free and independent people on earth that formulated a
written complete Constitution. I affirm that the Constitution of
Virginia in 1776 was the first written Constitution known to history
adopted by the people. And the frontispiece and the fundamental
principle of that Constitution, was the Bill of Rights--that Bill of
Rights, drawn by George Mason, you, gentlemen, in your Constitution of
New York, from your first Constitution to your last, have adopted. So
when you expatiate upon the merits of written-over prescriptive
constitutions, and with such eloquence and convincing force, I beg you
to remember that this now forlorn and bereaved Commonwealth was the
first people on earth that ever promulgated a formal, complete, written
Constitution, dividing the functions of government in separate
departments and reposing it for its authority upon the will of the
people. Jefferson gave you the Declaration of Independence in pursuance
of a resolution adopted by the Legislature of Virginia, instructing the
delegates in the Continental Congress to propose a Declaration of
Independence. The first suggestion of your more perfect union came from
the Legislature of Virginia in January, 1786, and your Federal
Constitution is construed upon the lines laid down by Edmund Randolph,
and proposed in the convention as the basis of the Constitution which
resulted in your now incomparable, as Mr. Gladstone says, incomparable
instrument of government.

Furthermore, your great Northwest, your States of Ohio and Michigan,
whose jurisprudence Judge Cooley so signally illustrates, Indiana and
others, to whom are you indebted that this vast and fertile and glorious
country is an integral part of our Union? You are indebted to a
Virginian, to Patrick Henry, then the Governor of Virginia, for the
expedition to the Northwest headed by George Rogers Clark, as he was
called, the Hannibal of the New World, who with three