that State, discharged the debtor."

The case, as will readily be seen, involved many subtle and difficult
points of law, municipal, national, and international; and the defence
was contained in the following five pleas: (1.) That of payment,
generally; (2.) That of the Virginia act of sequestration, October 20,
1777; (3.) That of the Virginia act of forfeiture, May 3, 1779; (4.)
That of British violations of the treaty of 1783; (5.) That of the
necessary annulment of the debt, in consequence of the dissolution of
the co-allegiance of the two parties, on the declaration of
independence.[418]

Some idea of the importance attached to the case may be inferred from
the assertion of Wirt, that "the whole power of the bar of Virginia
was embarked" in it; and that the "learning, argument, and eloquence"
exhibited in the discussion were such "as to have placed that bar, in
the estimation of the federal judges, ... above all others in the
United States."[419] Associated with Patrick Henry, for the defendant,
were John Marshall, Alexander Campbell, and James Innes.

For several weeks before the trial of this cause in 1791, Patrick
Henry secluded himself from all other engagements, and settled down to
intense study in the retirement of his home in the country. A grandson
of the orator, Patrick Henry Fontaine, who was there as a student of
the law, relates that he himself was sent off on a journey of sixty
miles to procure a copy of Vattel's Law of Nations. From this and
other works of international law, the old lawyer "made many
quotations; and with the whole syllabus of notes and heads of
arguments, he filled a manuscript volume more than an inch thick, and
closely written; a book ... bound with leather, and convenient for
carrying in his pocket. He had in his yard ... an office, built at
some distance from his dwelling, and an avenue of fine black locusts
shaded a walk in front of it.... He usually walked and meditated, when
the weather permitted, in this shaded avenue.... For several days in
succession, before his departure to Richmond to attend the court," the
orator was seen "walking frequently in this avenue, with his note-book
in his hand, which he often opened and read; and from his gestures,
while promenading alone in the shade of the locusts," it was supposed
that he was committing his speech to memory.[420] According to another
account, so eager was his application to this labor that, in one stage
of it, "he shut hi