Page:Sketches of the life and character of Patrick Henry.djvu/174

150 removal of the powder, and while Mr. Henry was on his march towards Williamsburg, some of the inhabitants of the town, to the great offence of the graver citizens, had possessed themselves of a few of the guns which still remained in the magazine. This step gave great displeasure as well as alarm to the governor; and although the mayor and council, as well as all the more respectable inhabitants of the town, condemned it in terms as strong as his own, and sincerely united in the means which were used to recover the arms, yet his lordship continued to brood over it in secret, until, with the aid of the minions of the palace, he hatched a scheme of low and cruel revenge, sufficient of itself to cover him with immortal infamy. It was on Monday night, the 5th of June, that this scheme discovered itself. "Last Monday night," says Purdie, "an unfortunate accident happened to two persons of this city, who, with a number of others, had assembled at the magazine, to furnish themselves with arms. Upon their entering the door, one of the guns, which had a spring to it, and was charged eight fingers deep with swan shot, went off, and lodged two balls in one of their shoulders, another entered at his wrist, and is not yet extracted; the other person had one of his fingers shot off, and the next to it so much shattered as to render it useless, by which sad misfortune, he is deprived of the means of procuring a livelihood by his business. Spring guns, it seems, were placed at other parts of the magazine, of which the public were totally ignorant; and certainly had any person lost his life, the perpetrator or perpetrators of this diabolical invention, might have been justly branded with the opprobrious title of murderers. O tempora! O mores!"

The indignation naturally excited by this piece of