Page:Sketches of the life and character of Patrick Henry.djvu/359

 LIFE OF HENRY. 335'

great scene, are laid in the dust. An uninformed pos- terity would be unacquainted with the awful necessity, which impelled us on. If the means were within reach — we were warranted by the laws of nature and nations, to use them. The fact was that we were attacked by one of the most formidable nations under heaven; a nation that carried terror and dread with its thunder to both hemispheres. "" (This illustration of the power of Great Britain was, if we may trust respectable tradition, much more expanded than we find it in the report; and such was the force of his imagination, and the irresistible energy of his delivery and action, that the audience now felt themselves instinctively recoiling from the tremendous power of that very nation, which but a short time before had been exhibited as a mere dot in the Atlantic, a point so microscopic as to be scarcely visible to the naked eye: he proceeds to close the first member of his first point, thus:) " Our united property enabled us to look in the face that mighty people. Dared we to have gone in opposi- tion to them, bound hand and foot.^ Would we have dared to resist them, fettered.^ for we should have been fettered, if we had been deprived of so considerable a part of our little stock of national resources. In that most critical and dangerous emergency, our all was but a little thing. Had we a treasury — an exchequer.^ Had we commerce? Had we any revenue? Had we any thing from which a nation could draw wealth? No, sir. Our credit became the scorn of our foes. However, the efforts of certain patriotic characters, (there were not a few of them, thank heaven,) gave us credit among our own people. But we had not a farthing to spare. We were obliged to go on a most grievous anticipation, the weight of which we feel at this day. Recur to our

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