_ iv. 240-241.

[407] _Ibid._ iv. 241.

[408] _Jour. Va. House Del._ 42-43.

[409] _Jour. Va. House Del._ 32.

[410] Madison, _Letters_, etc., i. 443-444.

[411] For contemporary allusions to this first example of
gerrymandering, see _Writings of Washington_, ix. 446-447; _Writings
of Jefferson_, ii. 574; Rives, _Life of Madison_, ii. 653-655;
Bancroft, _Hist. Const._ ii. 485.

[412] Bancroft, _Hist. Const._ ii. 488-489.

[413] Gales, _Debates_, i. 258-261.

[414] Marshall, _Life of Washington_, v. 209-210; Story, _Const._ i.
211.

[415] Howison, _Hist. Va._ ii. 333.

CHAPTER XX

LAST LABORS AT THE BAR

The incidents embraced within the last three chapters cover the period
from 1786 to 1791, and have been thus narrated by themselves for the
purpose of exhibiting as distinctly as possible, and in unbroken
sequence, Patrick Henry's relations to each succeeding phase of that
immense national movement which produced the American Constitution,
with its first ten amendments.

During those same fervid years, however, in which he was devoting, as
it might seem, every power of body and mind to his great labors as a
party leader, and as a critic and moulder of the new Constitution, he
had resumed, and he was sturdily carrying forward, most exacting
labors in the practice of the law.

Late in the year 1786, as will be remembered, being then poor and in
debt, he declined another election to the governorship, and set
himself to the task of repairing his private fortunes, so sadly fallen
to decay under the noble neglect imposed by his long service of the
public. One of his kinsmen has left on record a pleasant anecdote to
the effect that the orator happened to mention at that time to a
friend how anxious he was under the great burden of his debts. "Go
back to the bar," said his friend; "your tongue will soon pay your
debts. If you will promise to go, I will give you a retaining fee on
the spot."[416] This course, in fact, he had already determined to
take; and thus at the age of fifty, at no time robust in health, and
at that time grown prematurely old under the storm and stress of all
those unquiet years, he again buckled on his professional armor, rusty
from long disuse, and pluckily began his life over again, in the hope
of making some provision for his own declining days, as well as for
the honor and welfare of his great brood of children and
grandchildren. To this task, accordingly, he then bent himse