o was even then a
plaintiff in a similar suit, and whom he had affectionately persuaded
not to remain at the courthouse to hear the coming speech against the
pecuniary demands of himself and his order, he said "that the clergy
had not thought him worthy of being retained on their side," and that
"he knew of no moral principle by which he was bound to refuse a fee
from their adversaries."[57] So, too, the conciliatory words, which,
after the trial, he tried to speak to the indignant plaintiff, and
which the latter has reported in the blunt form corresponding to his
own angry interpretation of them, after all may have borne the better
meaning given to them by Bishop Meade, who says that Patrick Henry, in
his apology to Maury, "pleaded as an excuse for his course, that he
was a young lawyer, a candidate for practice and reputation, and
therefore must make the best of his cause."[58]

These genial efforts at pacification are of rather more than casual
significance: they are indications of character. They mark a distinct
quality of the man's nature, of which he continued to give evidence
during the rest of his life,--a certain sweetness of spirit, which
never deserted him through all the stern conflicts of his career. He
was always a good fighter: never a good hater. He had the brain and
the temperament of an advocate; his imagination and his heart always
kindled hotly to the side that he had espoused, and with his
imagination and his heart always went all the rest of the man; in his
advocacy of any cause that he had thus made his own, he hesitated at
no weapon either of offence or of defence; he struck hard blows--he
spoke hard words--and he usually triumphed; and yet, even in the
paroxysms of the combat, and still more so when the combat was over,
he showed how possible it is to be a redoubtable antagonist without
having a particle of malice.

Then, too, from this first great scene in his public life, there comes
down to us another incident that has its own story to tell. In all the
roar of talk within and about the courthouse, after the trial was
over, one "Mr. Cootes, merchant of James River," was heard to say that
"he would have given a considerable sum out of his own pocket rather
than his friend Patrick should have been guilty of a crime but little,
if any thing, inferior to that which brought Simon Lord Lovat to the
block,"--adding that Patrick's speech had "exceeded the most seditious
and inflammatory harangues of