for any position which he chose to take. In trying, therefore,
to estimate the quality of his statesmanship when dealing with these
questions, we lack a part of the evidence which is essential to any
just conclusion; and we are left peculiarly at the mercy of those
sweeping censures which have been occasionally applied to his
political conduct during that period.[335]

On the assurance of peace, in the spring of 1783, perhaps the earliest
and the knottiest problem which had to be taken up was the one
relating to that vast body of Americans who then bore the
contumelious name of Tories,--those Americans who, against all loss
and ignominy, had steadily remained loyal to the unity of the British
empire, unflinching in their rejection of the constitutional heresy of
American secession. How should these execrable beings--the defeated
party in a long and most rancorous civil war--be treated by the party
which was at last victorious? Many of them were already in exile:
should they be kept there? Many were still in this country: should
they be banished from it? As a matter of fact, the exasperation of
public feeling against the Tories was, at that time, so universal and
so fierce that no statesman could then lift up his voice in their
favor without dashing himself against the angriest currents of popular
opinion and passion, and risking the loss of the public favor toward
himself. Nevertheless, precisely this is what Patrick Henry had the
courage to do. While the war lasted, no man spoke against the Tories
more sternly than did he. The war being ended, and its great purpose
secured, no man, excepting perhaps Alexander Hamilton, was so prompt
and so energetic in urging that all animosities of the war should be
laid aside, and that a policy of magnanimous forbearance should be
pursued respecting these baffled opponents of American independence.
It was in this spirit that, as soon as possible after the cessation of
hostilities, he introduced a bill for the repeal of an act "to
prohibit intercourse with, and the admission of British subjects
into" Virginia,[336]--language well understood to refer to the Tories.
This measure, we are told, not only excited surprise, but "was, at
first, received with a repugnance apparently insuperable." Even his
intimate friend John Tyler, the speaker of the House, hotly resisted
it in the committee of the whole, and in the course of his argument,
turning to Patrick Henry, asked "how he, above all ot