Delegates should give it a countenance, but, as
good luck would have it, it was with difficulty
refused.[266] ... Immediately then, ... a bill is brought in
to remove the seat of government,--some say, up to Hanover,
to be called Henry-Town."[267]

This gossip of a disappointed Virginian aristocrat, in vituperation of
the public character of Governor Henry, naturally leads us forward in
our story to that more stupendous eruption of gossip which relates, in
the first instance, to the latter part of December, 1776, and which
alleges that a conspiracy was then formed among certain members of the
General Assembly to make Patrick Henry the dictator of Virginia. The
first intimation ever given to the public concerning it, was given by
Jefferson several years afterward, in his "Notes on Virginia," a
fascinating brochure which was written by him in 1781 and 1782, was
first printed privately in Paris in 1784, and was first published in
England in 1787, in America in 1788.[268] The essential portions of
his statement are as follows:--

"In December, 1776, our circumstances being much distressed,
it was proposed in the House of Delegates to create a
dictator, invested with every power legislative, executive,
and judiciary, civil and military, of life and death, over
our persons and over our properties.... One who entered into
this contest from a pure love of liberty, and a sense of
injured rights, who determined to make every sacrifice and
to meet every danger, for the reestablishment of those
rights on a firm basis, ... must stand confounded and
dismayed when he is told that a considerable portion of" the
House "had meditated the surrender of them into a single
hand, and in lieu of a limited monarchy, to deliver him over
to a despotic one.... The very thought alone was treason
against the people; was treason against man in general; as
riveting forever the chains which bow down their necks, by
giving to their oppressors a proof, which they would have
trumpeted through the universe, of the imbecility of
republican government, in times of pressing danger, to
shield them from harm.... Those who meant well, of the
advocates of this measure (and most of them meant well, for
I know them personally, had been their fellow-laborer in the
common cause, and had often proved the purity of their
principles