te your country on having
citizens deserving of the high honor to which you are
exalted. For the being elected to the first magistracy of a
free people is certainly the pinnacle of human glory; and I
am persuaded that they could not have made a happier choice.
Will you excuse me,--but I am myself so extremely
democratical, that I think it a fault in your constitution
that the governor should be eligible for three years
successively. It appears to me that a government of three
years may furnish an opportunity of acquiring a very
dangerous influence. But this is not the worst.... A man who
is fond of office, and has his eye upon reelection, will be
courting favor and popularity at the expense of his duty....
There is a barbarism crept in among us that extremely shocks
me: I mean those tinsel epithets with which (I come in for
my share) we are so beplastered,--'his excellency,' and 'his
honor,' 'the honorable president of the honorable congress,'
or 'the honorable convention.' This fulsome, nauseating
cant may be well enough adapted to barbarous monarchies, or
to gratify the adulterated pride of the 'magnifici' in
pompous aristocracies; but in a great, free, manly, equal
commonwealth, it is quite abominable. For my own part, I
would as lief they would put ratsbane in my mouth as the
'excellency' with which I am daily crammed. How much more
true dignity was there in the simplicity of address amongst
the Romans,--'Marcus Tullius Cicero,' 'Decimo Bruto
Imperatori,' or 'Caio Marcello Consuli,'--than to 'his
excellency Major-General Noodle,' or to 'the honorable John
Doodle.' ... If, therefore, I should sometimes address a
letter to you without the 'excellency' tacked, you must not
esteem it a mark of personal or official disrespect, but the
reverse."[257]

Of all the words of congratulation which poured in upon the new
governor, probably none came so straight from the heart, and none
could have been quite so sweet to him, as those which, on the 12th of
August, were uttered by some of the persecuted dissenters in Virginia,
who, in many an hour of need, had learned to look up to Patrick Henry
as their strong and splendid champion, in the legislature and in the
courts. On the date just mentioned, "the ministers and delegates of
the Baptist churches" of the State, being met i