allel in history. By the
judicious sacrifice of one law, the Parliament of Great Britain procured
an acquiescence in all that remained.

GEORGE BANCROFT

Virginia received the plan to tax America by Parliament with
consternation. At first the planters foreboded universal ruin; but soon
they resolved that the act should recoil on England, and began to be
proud of frugality; articles of luxury of English manufacture were
banished, and threadbare coats were most in fashion. A large and
embarrassing provincial debt enforced the policy of thrift.

Happily the Legislature of Virginia was then assembled; and the electors
of Louisa County had just filled a sudden vacancy in their
representation by making choice of Patrick Henry. He had resided among
them scarcely a year, but his benignity of temper, pure life, and
simplicity of habits had already won their love. Devoted from his heart
to their interest, he never flattered the people and was never forsaken
by them. As he took his place, not yet acquainted with the forms of
business in the House, or with its members, he saw the time for the
enforcement of the Stamp Tax drawing near, while all the other colonies,
through timid hesitation or the want of opportunity, still remained
silent, and cautious loyalty hushed the experienced statesmen of his
own. More than half the assembly had made the approaching close of the
session an excuse for returning home.

But Patrick Henry disdained submission. Alone, a burgess of but a few
days, unadvised and unassisted, in an auspicious moment, of which the
recollection cheered him to his latest day, he came forward in the
committee of the whole House, and while Thomas Jefferson, a young
collegian from the mountain frontier, stood outside of the closed hall,
eager to catch the first tidings of resistance, and George Washington,
as is believed, was in his place as a member, he maintained by
resolutions that the inhabitants of Virginia inherited from the first
adventurers and settlers of that dominion equal franchises with the
people of Great Britain; that royal charters had declared this equality;
that taxation by themselves, or by persons chosen by themselves to
represent them, was the distinguishing characteristic of British freedom
and of the constitution; that the people of that most ancient colony had
uninterruptedly enjoyed the right of being thus governed by their own
laws respecting their internal polity and taxation; that this righ