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Patrick Henry, December 1763
In an angry letter to another parson,
the Reverend James Maury, who had brought suit against the
vestry whom Henry represented in the Parsons' Cause, recounted
Henry's speech to the jury at Hanover Court House:
Mr. Henry . . . (who had been called in by the
Defendants, as we suspected, to do the dirty job I some
time ago told you of), after Mr. Lyons [Maury's attorney]
had opened the cause, rose and harangued the jury for near
an hour. This harangue turned upon points as much out of
his own depth, and that of the jury, as they were foreign
to the purpose; which if would be impertinent to mention
here. However, after he had discussed those points, he labored
to prove "that the act of 1758 had every characteristic
of a good law; that it was a law of general utility, and
could not, consistently with what he called the original
compact between King and people, stipulating protection
on the one hand and obedience on the other, be annulled."
Hence, he inferred, "that a King, by annulling or disallowing
Laws of this salutary nature, from being the father of his
people, degenerates into a Tyrant, and forfeits all right
to his subjects' obedience." He further argued, "that the
only use of an Established Church and Clergy in society,
is to enforce obedience to civil sanctions, and the observance
of those which are called duties of imperfect obligation;
that, when a Clergy ceases to answer these ends, the community
have no further need of their ministry, and may justly strip
them of their appointments; that the Clergy of Virginia,
in this particular instance of their refusing to acquiesce
in the law in question, had been so far from answering,
that they had most notoriously counteracted, those great
ends of their institutions; that, therefore, instead of
useful members of the state, they ought to be considered
as enemies of the community; and that, in the case now before
them [the jury], Mr. Maury, instead of countenance, and
protection and recovery of damages, very justly deserved
to be punished with signal severity." And then he perorates
to the following purpose, "that excepting they (the jury)
were disposed themselves to rivet the chains of bondage
on their own necks, he hoped they would not let slip the
opportunity which now offered, of making such an example
of him as might, hereafter, be a warning to himself and
his brethren, not to have the temerity, for the future,
to dispute the validity of such laws, authenticated by the
only authority, which, in his conception, could give force
to laws for the government of this Colony, authority of
a legal representative of a Council, and of a kind and benevolent
and patriot Governor." You'll observe I do not pretend to
remember his words, but take this to have been the sum and
substance of this part of his labored oration. When he came
to that part of it where he undertook to assert, "that a
King by annulling or disallowing acts of so salutary a nature,
from being the Father of his people degenerated into a Tyrant,
and forfeits all right to his subjects' obedience;" the
more sober and virtuous part of the audience were struck
with horror. Mr. Lyons called out aloud, and with an honest
warmth, to the Bench, "That the gentleman had spoken treason,"
and expressed his astonishment "that their worships could
hear it without emotion, or any mark of dissatisfaction."
At the same instant, too, amongst some gentlemen in the
crowd behind me, was a confused murmur of Treason, Treason!
Yet Mr. Henry went on in the same treasonable and licentious
strain, without interruption from the Bench, even without
receiving the least exterior token of their disapprobation.
Captain Thomas Trevilian, a member
of the audience, recalled this portion of Henry's speech.
We have heard a great deal about the benevolence
and holy zeal of our reverend clergy, but how is this manifested?
Do they manifest their zeal in the cause of religion and
humanity by practicing the mild and benevolent precepts
of the Gospel of Jesus? Do they feed the hungry and clothe
the naked? Oh, no, gentlemen! Instead of feeding the hungry
and clothing the naked, these rapacious harpies would, were
their powers equal to their will, snatch from the hearth
of their honest parishioner his last hoe-cake, from the
widow and her orphan child their last milch cow! The last
bed, nay, the last blanket from the lying-in woman!
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