men.

It was said that Mr. Henry was not learned in the law; but he had read
in "Coke upon Littleton" that an Act of Parliament against Magna Carta,
or common right, or reason, is void--which was clearly the case of the
Stamp Act. On the flyleaf of an old copy of that book this unlearned
lawyer accordingly wrote out some resolutions of protest which he showed
to his friends, George Johnston and John Fleming, for their approval.
Their approval once obtained, Mr. Johnston moved, with Mr. Henry as
second, that the House of Burgesses should go into committee of the
whole, "to consider the steps necessary to be taken in consequence of
the resolutions... charging certain Stamp Duties in the colonies";
which was accordingly done on the 29th of May, upon which day Mr. Henry
presented his resolutions.

The 29th of May was late in that session of the Virginia House of
Burgesses; and most likely the resolutions would have been rejected if
some two-thirds of the members, who knew nothing of Mr. Henry's plans
and supposed the business of the Assembly finished, had not already gone
home. Among those who had thus departed, it is not likely that there
were many of Patrick Henry's followers. Yet even so there was much
opposition. The resolutions were apparently refashioned in committee of
the whole, for a preamble was omitted outright and four "Resolves"
were made over into five which were presented to the House on the day
following.

Young Mr. Jefferson, at that time a law student and naturally much
interested in the business of lawmaking, heard the whole of this day's
famous debate from the door of communication between the House and the
lobby. The five resolutions, he afterwards remembered, were "opposed by
Randolph, Bland, Pendleton, Nicholas, Wythe, and all the old members,
whose influence in the House had, till then, been unbroken;... not from
any question of our rights, but on the ground that the same sentiments
had been, at their preceding session, expressed in a more conciliatory
form, to which the answers were not yet received. But torrents of
sublime eloquence from Mr. Henry, backed by the solid reasoning of
Johnston, prevailed." It was in connection with the fifth resolution,
upon which the debate was "most bloody," that Patrick Henry is said to
have declared that "Tarquin and Caesar had each his Brutus, Charles
the First his Cromwell, and George the Third--"; upon which cries of
"Treason" were heard from every part of t