Patrick Henry Part 23

Then, in addition to his objections to the general character of the Const.i.tution, namely, as a consolidated government, unrestrained by an express guarantee of rights, he applied his criticisms in great detail, and with merciless rigor, to each department of the proposed government,--the legislative, the executive, and the judicial; and with respect to each one of these he insisted that its intended functions were such as to inspire distrust and alarm. Of course, we cannot here follow this fierce critic of the Const.i.tution into all the detail of his criticisms; but, as a single example, we may cite a portion of his a.s.sault upon the executive department,--an a.s.sault, as will be seen, far better suited to the political apprehensions of his own time than of ours:--

"The Const.i.tution is said to have beautiful features; but when I come to examine these features, sir, they appear to me horribly frightful. Among other deformities, it has an awful squinting; it squints towards monarchy. And does not this raise indignation in the breast of every true American?

Your president may easily become king.... Where are your checks in this government? Your strongholds will be in the hands of your enemies. It is on a supposition that your American governors shall be honest, that all the good qualities of this government are founded; but its defective and imperfect construction puts it in their power to perpetrate the worst of mischiefs, should they be bad men.

And, sir, would not all the world, from the eastern to the western hemispheres, blame our distracted folly in resting our rights upon the contingency of our rulers being good or bad? Show me that age and country where the rights and liberties of the people were placed on the sole chance of their rulers being good men, without a consequent loss of liberty.... If your American chief be a man of ambition and abilities, how easy is it for him to render himself absolute! The army is in his hands; and if he be a man of address, it will be attached to him, and it will be the subject of long meditation with him to seize the first auspicious moment to accomplish his design. And, sir, will the American spirit solely relieve you when this happens? I would rather infinitely--and I am sure most of this convention are of the same opinion--have a king, lords, and commons, than a government so replete with such insupportable evils. If we make a king, we may prescribe the rules by which he shall rule his people, and interpose such checks as shall prevent him from infringing them; but the president, in the field, at the head of his army, can prescribe the terms on which he shall reign master, so far that it will puzzle any American ever to get his neck from under the galling yoke.... Will not the recollection of his crimes teach him to make one bold push for the American throne? Will not the immense difference between being master of everything, and being ignominiously tried and punished, powerfully excite him to make this bold push? But, sir, where is the existing force to punish him? Can he not, at the head of his army, beat down every opposition? Away with your president! we shall have a king. The army will salute him monarch. Your militia will leave you, and a.s.sist in making him king, and fight against you. And what have you to oppose this force? What will then become of you and your rights? Will not absolute despotism ensue?"[383]

Without reproducing here, in further detail, Patrick Henry's objections to the new Const.i.tution, it may now be stated that they all sprang from a single idea, and all revolved about that idea, namely, that the new plan of government, as it then stood, seriously endangered the rights and liberties of the people of the several States. And in holding this opinion he was not at all peculiar. Very many of the ablest and n.o.blest statesmen of the time shared it with him. Not to name again his chief a.s.sociates in Virginia, nor to cite the language of such men as Burke and Rawlins Lowndes, of South Carolina; as Timothy Bloodworth, of North Carolina; as Samuel Chase and Luther Martin, of Maryland; as George Clinton, of New York; as Samuel Adams, John Hanc.o.c.k, and Elbridge Gerry, of Ma.s.sachusetts; as Joshua Atherton, of New Hamps.h.i.+re, it may sufficiently put us into the tone of contemporary opinion upon the subject, to recall certain grave words of Jefferson, who, watching the whole scene from the calm distance of Paris, thus wrote on the 2d of February, 1788, to an American friend:--

"I own it astonishes me to find such a change wrought in the opinions of our countrymen since I left them, as that three fourths of them should be contented to live under a system which leaves to their governors the power of taking from them the trial by jury in civil cases, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of commerce, the habeas corpus laws, and of yoking them with a standing army. That is a degeneracy in the principles of liberty, to which I had given four centuries, instead of four years."[384]

Holding such objections to the proposed Const.i.tution, what were Patrick Henry and his a.s.sociates in the Virginia convention to do?

Were they to reject the measure outright? Admitting that it had some good features, they yet thought that the best course to be taken by Virginia would be to remit the whole subject to a new convention of the States,--a convention which, being summoned after a year or more of intense and universal discussion, would thus represent the later, the more definite, and the more enlightened desires of the American people. But despairing of this, Patrick Henry and his friends concentrated all their forces upon this single and clear line of policy: so to press their objections to the Const.i.tution as to induce the convention, not to reject it, but to postpone its adoption until they could refer to the other States in the American confederacy the following momentous proposition, namely, "a declaration of rights, a.s.serting, and securing from encroachment, the great principles of civil and religious liberty, and the undeniable rights of the people, together with amendments to the most exceptionable parts of the said const.i.tution of government."[385]

Such, then, was the real question over which in that a.s.semblage, from the first day to the last, the battle raged. The result of the battle was reached on Wednesday, the 25th of June; and that result was a victory for immediate adoption, but by a majority of only ten votes, instead of the fifty votes that were claimed for it at the beginning of the session. Moreover, even that small majority for immediate adoption was obtained only by the help, first, of a preamble solemnly affirming it to be the understanding of Virginia in this act that it retained every power not expressly granted to the general government; and, secondly, of a subsidiary resolution promising to recommend to Congress "whatsoever amendments may be deemed necessary."

Just before the decisive question was put, Patrick Henry, knowing that the result would be against him, and knowing, also, from the angry things uttered within that House and outside of it, that much solicitude was abroad respecting the course likely to be taken by the defeated party, then and there spoke these n.o.ble words:--

"I beg pardon of this House for having taken up more time than came to my share, and I thank them for the patience and polite attention with which I have been heard. If I shall be in the minority, I shall have those painful sensations which arise from a conviction of being overpowered in a good cause. Yet I will be a peaceable citizen. My head, my hand, and my heart shall be at liberty to retrieve the loss of liberty, and remove the defects of that system in a const.i.tutional way. I wish not to go to violence, but will wait, with hopes that the spirit which predominated in the Revolution is not yet gone, nor the cause of those who are attached to the Revolution yet lost. I shall therefore patiently wait in expectation of seeing that government changed, so as to be compatible with the safety, liberty, and happiness of the people."[386]

Those words of the great Virginian leader proved to be a message of rea.s.surance to many an anxious citizen, in many a State,--not least so to that great citizen who, from the slopes of Mount Vernon, was then watching, night and day, for signs of some abatement in the storm of civil discord. Those words, too, have, in our time, won for the orator who spoke them the deliberate, and the almost lyrical, applause of the greatest historian who has yet laid hand on the story of the Const.i.tution: "Henry showed his genial nature, free from all malignity. He was like a billow of the ocean on the first bright day after the storm, das.h.i.+ng itself against the rocky cliff, and then, sparkling with light, retreating to its home."[387]

Long after the practical effects of the Virginia convention of 1788 had been merged in the general political life of the country, that convention was still proudly remembered for the magnificent exertions of intellectual power, and particularly of eloquence, which it had called forth. So lately as the year 1857, there was still living a man who, in his youth, had often looked in upon that famous convention, and whose enthusiasm, in recalling its great scenes, was not to be chilled even by the frosts of his ninety winters:--

"The impressions made by the powerful arguments of Madison and the overwhelming eloquence of Henry can never fade from my mind. I thought them almost supernatural. They seemed raised up by Providence, each in his way, to produce great results: the one by his grave, dignified, and irresistible arguments to convince and enlighten mankind; the other, by his brilliant and enrapturing eloquence to lead whithersoever he would."[388]

Those who had heard Patrick Henry on the other great occasions of his career were ready to say that his eloquence in the convention of 1788 was, upon the whole, fully equal to anything ever exhibited by him in any other place. The official reports of his speeches in that a.s.semblage were always declared to be inferior in "strength and beauty" to those actually made by him there.[389] "In forming an estimate of his eloquence," says one gentleman who there heard him, "no reliance can be placed on the printed speeches. No reporter whatever could take down what he actually said; and if he could, it would fall far short of the original."[390]

In his arguments against the Const.i.tution Patrick Henry confined himself to no systematic order. The convention had indeed resolved that the doc.u.ment should be discussed, clause by clause, in a regular manner; but in spite of the complaints and reproaches of his antagonists, he continually broke over all barriers, and delivered his "multiform and protean attacks" in such order as suited the workings of his own mind.

In the course of that long and eager controversy, he had several pa.s.sages of sharp personal collision with his opponents, particularly with Governor Randolph, whose vacillating course respecting the Const.i.tution had left him exposed to the most galling comments, and who on one occasion, in his anguish, turned upon Patrick Henry with the exclamation: "I find myself attacked in the most illiberal manner by the honorable gentleman. I disdain his aspersions and his insinuations. His asperity is warranted by no principle of parliamentary decency, nor compatible with the least shadow of friends.h.i.+p; and if our friends.h.i.+p must fall, let it fall, like Lucifer, never to rise again."[391] Like all very eloquent men, he was taunted, of course, for having more eloquence than logic; for "his declamatory talents;" for his "vague discourses and mere sports of fancy;" for discarding "solid argument;" and for "throwing those bolts" which he had "so peculiar a dexterity at discharging."[392] On one occasion, old General Adam Stephen tried to burlesque the orator's manner of speech;[393] on another occasion, that same petulant warrior bluntly told Patrick that if he did "not like this government," he might "go and live among the Indians," and even offered to facilitate the orator's self-expatriation among the savages: "I know of several nations that live very happily; and I can furnish him with a vocabulary of their language."[394]

Knowing, as he did, every pa.s.sion and prejudice of his audience, he adopted, it appears, almost every conceivable method of appeal. "The variety of arguments," writes one witness, "which Mr. Henry generally presented in his speeches, addressed to the capacities, prejudices, and individual interests of his hearers, made his speeches very unequal. He rarely made in that convention a speech which Quintilian would have approved. If he soared at times, like the eagle, and seemed like the bird of Jove to be armed with thunder, he did not disdain to stoop like the hawk to seize his prey,--but the instant that he had done it, rose in pursuit of another quarry."[395]

Perhaps the most wonderful example of his eloquence, if we may judge by contemporary descriptions, was that connected with the famous scene of the thunder-storm, on Tuesday, the 24th of June, only one day before the decisive vote was taken. The orator, it seems, had gathered up all his forces for what might prove to be his last appeal against immediate adoption, and was portraying the disasters which the new system of government, unless amended, was to bring upon his countrymen, and upon all mankind: "I see the awful immensity of the dangers with which it is pregnant. I see it. I feel it. I see beings of a higher order anxious concerning our decision. When I see beyond the horizon that bounds human eyes, and look at the final consummation of all human things, and see those intelligent beings which inhabit the ethereal mansions reviewing the political decisions and revolutions which, in the progress of time, will happen in America, and the consequent happiness or misery of mankind, I am led to believe that much of the account, on one side or the other, will depend on what we now decide. Our own happiness alone is not affected by the event. All nations are interested in the determination. We have it in our power to secure the happiness of one half of the human race. Its adoption may involve the misery of the other hemisphere." Thus far the stenographer had proceeded, when he suddenly stopped, and placed within brackets the following note: "[Here a violent storm arose, which put the House in such disorder, that Mr. Henry was obliged to conclude.]"[396] But the scene which is thus quietly despatched by the official reporter of the convention was again and again described, by many who were witnesses of it, as something most sublime and even appalling. After having delineated with overpowering vividness the calamities which were likely to befall mankind from their adoption of the proposed frame of government, the orator, it is said, as if wielding an enchanter's wand, suddenly enlarged the arena of the debate and the number of his auditors; for, peering beyond the veil which shuts in mortal sight, and pointing "to those celestial beings who were hovering over the scene," he addressed to them "an invocation that made every nerve shudder with supernatural horror, when, lo! a storm at that instant rose, which shook the whole building, and the spirits whom he had called seemed to have come at his bidding. Nor did his eloquence, or the storm, immediately cease; but availing himself of the incident, with a master's art, he seemed to mix in the fight of his ethereal auxiliaries, and, 'rising on the wings of the tempest, to seize upon the artillery of heaven, and direct its fiercest thunders against the heads of his adversaries.' The scene became insupportable; and the House rose without the formality of adjournment, the members rus.h.i.+ng from their seats with precipitation and confusion."[397]

FOOTNOTES:

[362] _Writings of Was.h.i.+ngton_, ix. 265-266.

[363] MS.

[364] _Writings of Was.h.i.+ngton_, ix. 273.

[365] Madison, _Letters_, etc. i. 356.

[366] _Ibid._ i. 364-365.

[367] Madison, _Letters_, etc. i. 378.

[368] _Ibid._ i. 387.

[369] Madison, _Letters_, i. 388.

[370] Bancroft, _Hist. Const._, ii. 465.

[371] _Writings of Was.h.i.+ngton_, ix. 356.

[372] Rives, _Life of Madison_, ii. 544, note.

[373] Rives, _Life of Madison_, ii. 541.

[374] _Hist. Mag._ for 1873, 274.

[375] Elliot, _Debates_, i. 491; v. 502, 534-535.

[376] Elliot, _Debates_, iii.

[377] Curtis, _Hist. Const._ ii. 561, note.

[378] _Writings of Was.h.i.+ngton_, ix. 266, note.

[379] Elliot, _Debates_, iii. 161, 57, 63.

[380] Elliot, _Debates_, iii. 23, 52, 44, 156.

[381] Elliot, _Debates_, iii. 150, 462, 445-446.

[382] Elliot, _Debates_, iii. 149-150.

[383] Elliot, _Debates_, iii. 58-60.

[384] Bancroft, _Hist. Const._ ii. 459-460.

[385] Elliot, _Debates_, iii. 653.

[386] Elliot, _Debates_, iii. 652.

[387] Bancroft, _Hist. Const._ ii. 316-317.

[388] Rives, _Life of Madison_, ii. 610.

[389] Kennedy, _Life of Wirt_, i. 345.

[390] Spencer Roane, MS.

[391] Elliot, _Debates_, iii. 187.

[392] _Ibid._ iii. 406, 104, 248, 177.