rowned him with the public thanks, "for his
wise, prudent, and upright administration, during his last appointment
of chief magistrate of this Commonwealth; assuring him that they
retain a perfect sense of his abilities in the discharge of the duties
of that high and important office, and wish him all domestic happiness
on his return to private life."[346]

This return to private life meant, among other things, his return,
after an interruption of more than twelve years, to the practice of
the law. For this purpose he deemed it best to give up his remote home
at Leatherwood, and to establish himself in Prince Edward County,--a
place about midway between his former residence and the capital, and
much better suited to his convenience, as an active practitioner in
the courts. Accordingly, in Prince Edward County he continued to
reside from the latter part of 1786 until 1795. Furthermore, by that
county he was soon elected as one of its delegates in the Assembly;
and, resuming there his old position as leader, he continued to serve
in every session until the end of 1790, at which time he finally
withdrew from all official connection with public life. Thus it
happened that, by his retirement from the governorship in 1786, and by
his almost immediate restoration to the House of Delegates, he was put
into a situation to act most aggressively and most powerfully on
public opinion in Virginia during the whole period of the struggle
over the new Constitution.

As regards his attitude toward that great business, we need, first of
all, to clear away some obscurity which has gathered about the
question of his habitual views respecting the relations of the several
States to the general government. It has been common to suppose that,
even prior to the movement for the new Constitution, Patrick Henry had
always been an extreme advocate of the rights of the States as
opposed to the central authority of the Union; and that the tremendous
resistance which he made to the new Constitution in all stages of the
affair prior to the adoption of the first group of amendments is to be
accounted for as the effect of an original and habitual tendency of
his mind.[347] Such, however, seems not to have been the case.

In general it may be said that, at the very outset of the Revolution,
Patrick Henry was one of the first of our statesmen to recognize the
existence and the imperial character of a certain cohesive central
authority, arising from the