Page:Sketches of the life and character of Patrick Henry.djvu/104

 80 SKETCHES OF THE

the provision which was required: and they did submit.

A body of British troops alleged to have been driven by stress of weather into Boston, in the recess of the colonial legislature, had been provided for out of the public monies, by the governor and his council. The legislature met shortly afterwards, and remonstrated against this unconstitutional appropriation, with that Roman firmness and dignity, which marked the charac- ter of Massachusetts in every stage of the contest. But governor Bernard, highly indignant at what he affected to consider as presumption, made such a communica- tion upon the subject to the British court, as could have had, and could have been designed to have no other effect, than to widen the breach, and inflame more high- ly those animosities, which already required no new aggravation.

These military preparations were well understood to be the harbingers of some unconstitutional act, the exe- cution of which they were necessary to enforce. Why those preparations were restiicted to the northern states, and more particularly to Massachusetts, has never been satisfactorily explained. There was no colony which resisted, with more firmness and constancy, the pretensions of the British parliament than that of Vir- ginia; yet no military force was thought necessary, dur- ing the lives of the governors Fauquier and Bottetourt, to keep down the spirit of rebellion in this colony. A solution of the difficulty may perhaps be found, in the character of the different governors. Virginia had the good fortune, during this period, to be governed by en- lightened and amiable men, who saw and did justice to the motives and measure of resistance which was medi- tated; who were both able and wilhng to distinguish be-

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