Page:Sketches of the life and character of Patrick Henry.djvu/352

 328 SKETCHES OF THE

extreme difficulty, to draw a sight on some object almost too small for vision — and blowing out the words, puny assent, with his lips curled with unutterable con- tempt.) America was long before that time a great and gallant nation. In the estimation of other nations, we were so: the beneficent hand of heaven enabled her to triumph, and secured to her the most sacred rights mortals can enjoy. Wlien these illustrious authors, these friends to human nature, these kind instructors of human errors and frailties,* contemplate the obligations and corresponding rights of nations, and define the in- ternal right, which is without constraint and not bind- ing, do they not understand such rights as these, which the British creditors now claim .^ Here this man tells us what conscience says ought to be done, and what is compulsory. These British debts must come within the gi'asp of human power, like all other human things. They ceased to have that external quality, and fell into that mass of pow er, which belonged to our legislature by the law of nations.'^

He comes now to a very serious obstacle, which it required both address and vigour to remove. Vattel, whom he had cited to support his position of the forfeit- able character of debts, and who, so far as Mr. Heniy had read him, does support him explicitly, annexes a qualification to the principle, which had been pressed with great power by the gentlemen who opened the cause. The curiosity of the reader will be gratified by seeing the manner in which he surmounted the objec- tion. " But we are told, that, admitting this to be ti'ue

��* In the second argument, he eulogized the writers on the laws of nations, " .IS benevolent spirits, who had held up the torch of science to a benighted ^^orld."

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