Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 1).djvu/19

Rh nobler mentor. George Wythe was one of the most honorably distinguished men of a period abounding in great names. Born in 1726, he received his education at William and Mary College. At the age of thirty he devoted himself to the study and practice of the law, and rose quickly to eminence in the profession. In 1758 he represented the college in the House of Burgesses. In 1764 he drew up a remonstrance against the Stamp Act, addressed to the British Parliament. As a member of the Congress of 1776 he was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. For ten years he taught jurisprudence at William and Mary. He aided Jefferson in revising the laws of Virginia. In 1777 he was appointed a Judge of the High Court of Chancery, and in 1786 became Chancellor. He was a member of the convention which framed the federal Constitution, and one of its warmest advocates in the Virginia Convention which ratified it. But he achieved a more peculiar distinction by practically demonstrating the sincerity of his faith in the humane philosophy of the age. In his lifetime he emancipated all his slaves and made a liberal provision for their subsistence. There were few men in his day of larger information and experience, and scarcely any of higher principle. Nor was Henry Clay the only one of his pupils who afterward won a great name, for Thomas Jefferson and John Marshall had been students of law in George Wythe's office.

When young Clay had served four years as the