PATRICK HENRY'S FIRST SPEECH.

BOUT the time of Mr. Henry's coming to the bar a controversy arose in Virginia which gradually produced a very strong excitement and called to it at length the attention of the whole State. This was the famous controversy between the clergy on the one hand, and the legislature of the people of the colony on the other, touching the stipend claimed by the former; and, as this was the occasion on which Mr. Henry's genius first broke forth, those who take an interest in his life will not be displeased by a particular account of the nature and grounds of the dispute.

It will be borne in mind that the Church of England was at this period the established Church of Virginia, and by an act of Assembly passed so far back as the year 1696 each minister of a parish had been provided with an annual stipend of sixteen thousand pounds of tobacco. This act was re-enacted, with amendments, in 1748, and in this form had received the royal assent. The price of tobacco had long remained stationary at two pence in the pound, or sixteen shillings and eight pence per hundred. According to the provisions of the law, the clergy had the right to demand, and were in the practice of receiving, payment to their stipend in the specific tobacco, unless they chose, for convenience, to commute it for money at the

market price. In the year 1755, however, the crop of tobacco having fallen short, the legislature passed "an act to enable the inhabitants of this colony to discharge their tobacco debts in money for the present year," by the provisions of which "all

persons from whom any tobacco was due were authorized to pay the same either in tobacco or in money, after the rate of sixteen shillings and eight pence per hundred, at the option of the debtor." This act was to continue in force for ten months, and no longer, and did not contain the usual clause of suspension until it should receive the royal assent. Whether the scarcity of tobacco was so general and so notorious as to render this act a measure of obvious humanity and necessity, or whether the clergy were satisfied by its generality, since it embraced sheriffs, clerks, attorneys, and all other tobacco creditors, as well as themselves, or whether they acquiesced in it as a temporary expedient which they supposed not likely to be repeated, it is certain. that no objection was made to the law at that time. They could not, indeed, have helped observing the benefits which the rich planters derived from the act, for they were receiving from fifty to sixty shillings per hundred for their tobacco, while they paid off their debts due in that article at the old price of sixteen shillings and eight pence. Nothing, however, was then said in defence either of the royal prerogative or of the rights of the clergy, but the law was permitted to go peaceably through its ten months' opera

tion. The great tobacco-planters had not | declared it utterly null and void. Thus supforgotten the fruits of this act when, in the ported, the clergy resolved to bring the quesyear 1758, upon a surmise that another short tion to a judicial test, and suits were accordcrop was likely to occur, the provisions of the ingly brought by them in the various county act of 1755 were re-enacted, and the new courts of the colony to recover their stipends law, like the former, contained no suspending in the specific tobacco. They selected the clause. The crop, as had been anticipated, county of Hanover as the place of the first did fall short, and the price of tobacco rose experiment, and this was made in a suit inimmediately from sixteen and eight pence to stituted by the Rev. James Maury against the fifty shillings per hundred. The clergy now hundred. The clergy now collector of that county and his sureties. The took the alarm, and the act was assailed by record of this suit is now before me. The an indignant, sarcastic and vigorous pam- declaration is found on the act of 1748, phlet entitled The Two-Penny Act, from which gives the tobacco; the defendants the pen of the Rev. John Camn, the rector of pleaded specially the act of 1758, which York Hampton parish, and the Episcopalian authorizes the commutation into money, at commissary for the colony. He was an- sixteen and eight pence. To this plea the swered by two pamphlets, written, the one plaintiff demurred, assigning for causes of by Colonel Richard Bland, and the other by demurrer, first, that the act of 1758, not Colonel Landon Carter, in both which the having received the royal assent, had not commissary was very roughly handled. He the force of a law; and secondly, that the replied in a still severer pamphlet under the king in council had declared the act null ludicrous title of The Colonels Dismounted. and void. The case stood for argument on The colonels rejoined, and this war of pam- the demurrer to the November term, 1763, phlets, in which, with some sound argument, and was argued by Mr. Lyons for the plainthere was a great deal of what Dryden has tiff and Mr. John Lewis for the defendants, called "the horse-play of raillery," was kept when the court, very much to the credit of up, until the whole colony, which had at first their candor and firmness, breasted the poplooked on for amusement, kindled seriously ular current by sustaining the demurrer. in the contest from motives of interest. Such Thus far the clergy sailed before the wind, was the excitement produced by the discus- and concluded, with good reason, that their sion, and at length so strong the current triumph was complete; for, the act of 1758 against the clergy, that the printers found it having been declared void by the judgment expedient to shut their presses against them on the demurrer, that of 1748 was left in in the colony, and Mr. Camn had at last to full force, and became in law the only stanresort to Maryland for publication. These dard for the finding of the jury. Mr. Lewis pamphlets are still extant, and it seems im- was so thoroughly convinced of this that he possible to deny at this day that the clergy retired from the cause, informing his clients had much the best of the argument. The that it had been, in effect, decided against king in his council took up the subject, de- them, and that there remained nothing more nounced the act of 1758 as a usurpation and for him to do. In this desperate situation

was bound to refuse a fee from their adversaries; besides, he confessed that in this controversy both his heart and judgment, as well as his professional duty, were on the side of the people. He then requested that his uncle would do him the favor to leave the ground.

they applied to Patrick Henry, and he un-
dertook to argue it for them before a jury at
the ensuing term. Accordingly, on the first
day of the following December, he attended
the court, and on his arrival found in the
court-yard such a concourse as would have
appalled any other man in his situation.
They were not the people of the county
merely who were there, but visitors from
all the counties to a considerable distance
around. The decision upon the demurrer
had produced a violent ferment among the
people and equal exultation on the part of
the clergy, who attended the court in a large
body, either to look down opposition or to
enjoy the final triumph of this hard-fought
contest, which they now considered as per-
fectly secure.
Among many other clergymen who at-riage again and returned home.
tended on this occasion came the Reverend
Patrick Henry, who was the plaintiff in an-
other cause of the same nature, then depend-
ing in court. When Mr. Henry saw his un-
cle approach, he walked up to his carriage,
accompanied by Colonel Meredith, and ex-
pressed his regret at seeing him there.

Why, Patrick," said the old gentleman, with a good-natured smile, "as to your saying hard things of the clergy, I advise you to let that alone: take my word for it, you will do yourself more harm than you will them; and as to my leaving the ground, I fear, my boy, that my presence could neither do you harm nor good in such a cause. However, since you seem to think otherwise and desire it of me so earnestly, you shall be gratified;" whereupon he entered his car

Soon after the opening of the court the cause was called. It stood on a writ of inquiry of damages, no plea having been entered by the defendants since the judgment on the demurrer. The array before Mr. Henry's eyes was now most fearful. On the bench sat more than twenty clergymen, the most learned men in the colony, and the most capable, as well as the severest, critics before whom it was possible for

Because, sir," said Mr. Henry, "you know that I have never yet spoken in public, and I fear that I shall be too much over-him to have made his début. The courtawed by your presence to be able to do my duty to my clients. Besides, sir, I shall be obliged to say some hard things of the clergy, and I am very unwilling to give pain to your feelings."

His uncle reproved him for having engaged in the cause, which Mr. Henry excused by saying that the clergy had not thought him worthy of being retained on their side, and he knew of no moral principle by which he

house was crowded with an overwhelming multitude and surrounded with an immense. and anxious throng, who, not finding room to enter, were endeavoring to listen without, in the deepest attention. But there was something still more awfully disconcerting than all this, for in the chair of the presiding magistrate sat no other person than his own father. Mr. Lyons opened the cause very briefly; in the way of argu