eing obtained afterward, as
the result of a process ingeniously contrived, as it were, to prevent
their being obtained at all. But at the close of that June day on
which he and his seventy-eight associates walked away from the
convention wherein, on this very proposition, they had just been voted
down, how did the case stand? The Constitution, now become the supreme
law of the land, was a Constitution which, unless amended, would, as
they sincerely believed, effect the political ruin of the American
people. As good citizens, as good men, what was left for them to do?
They had fought hard to get the Constitution amended before adoption.
They had failed. They must now fight hard to get it amended after
adoption. Disastrous would it be, to assume that the needed amendments
would now be carried at any rate. True, the Virginia convention, like
the conventions of several other States, had voted to recommend
amendments. But the hostility to amendments, as Patrick Henry
believed, was too deeply rooted to yield to mere recommendations. The
necessary amendments would not find their way through all the hoppers
and tubes and valves of the enormous mill erected within the
Constitution, unless forced onward by popular agitation,--and by
popular agitation widespread, determined, vehement, even alarming. The
powerful enemies of amendments must be convinced that, until
amendments were carried through that mill, there would be no true
peace or content among the surrounding inhabitants.

This gives us the clew to the policy steadily and firmly pursued by
Patrick Henry as a party leader, from June, 1788, until after the
ratification of the first ten amendments, on the 15th of December,
1791. It was simply a strategic policy dictated by his honest view of
the situation; a bold, manly, patriotic policy; a policy, however,
which was greatly misunderstood, and grossly misrepresented, at the
time; a policy, too, which grieved the heart of Washington, and for
several years raised between him and his ancient friend the one cloud
of distrust that ever cast a shadow upon their intercourse.

In fact, at the very opening of the Virginia convention, and in view
of the possible defeat of his demand for amendments, Patrick Henry had
formed a clear outline of this policy, even to the extent of
organizing throughout the State local societies for stirring up, and
for keeping up, the needed agitation. All this is made evident by an
important letter writte