st earnest and solemn manner, make
this application to Congress, that a convention be
immediately called, of deputies from the several States,
with full power to take into their consideration the defects
of this Constitution, that have been suggested by the state
conventions, and report such amendments thereto, as they
shall find best suited to promote our common interests, and
secure to ourselves and our latest posterity the great and
unalienable rights of mankind."[408]

Such was the purpose, such was the temper, of Virginia's appeal,
addressed to Congress, and written by Patrick Henry, on behalf of
immediate measures for curing the supposed defects of the
Constitution. Was it not likely that this appeal would be granted? One
grave doubt haunted the mind of Patrick Henry. If, in the elections
for senators and representatives then about to occur in the several
States, very great care was not taken, it might easily happen that a
majority of the members of Congress would be composed of men who would
obstruct, and perhaps entirely defeat, the desired amendments. With
the view of doing his part towards the prevention of such a result, he
determined that both the senators from Virginia, and as many as
possible of its representatives, should be persons who could be
trusted to help, and not to hinder, the great project.

Accordingly, when the day came for the election of senators by the
Assembly of Virginia, he just stood up in his place and named "Richard
Henry Lee and William Grayson, Esquires," as the two men who ought to
be elected as senators; and, furthermore, he named James Madison as
the one man who ought not to be elected as senator. Whereupon the vote
was taken; "and after some time," as the journal expresses it, the
committee to examine the ballot-boxes "returned into the House, and
reported that they had ... found a majority of votes in favor of
Richard Henry Lee and William Grayson, Esquires."[409] On the 8th of
December, 1788, just one month afterward, Madison himself, in a letter
to Jefferson, thus alluded to the incident: "They made me a candidate
for the Senate, for which I had not allotted my pretensions. The
attempt was defeated by Mr. Henry, who is omnipotent in the present
legislature, and who added to the expedients common on such occasions
a public philippic against my federal principles."[410]

Virginia's delegation in the Senate was thus made secure. How abou