Page:Sketches of the life and character of Patrick Henry.djvu/399

Rh hell show him the la'." Mr. Cowan, however, was so completely overwhelmed by the torrent which bore upon his client, that when he rose to reply to Mr. Henry, he was scarcely able to make an intelligible or audible remark. The cause was decided almost by acclamation. The jury retired for form sake, and instantly returned with a verdict for the defendant. Nor did the effect of Mr. Henry's speech stop here. The people were so highly excited by the tory audacity of such a suit, that Hook began to hear around him a cry more terrible than that of beef: it was the cry of tar and feathers: from the application of which, it is said, that nothing saved him but a precipitate flight and the speed of his horse.

I have not attempted, in the course of these sketches, to follow Mr. Henry through his professional career. I have no materials to justify such an attempt. It has been indeed, stated to me, in general, that he appeared in such and such a case, and that he shone with great lustre; but neither his speeches in those cases, nor any point of his argument, nor even any brilliant passage has been communicated, so that the sketch that could be given of them, must be either confined to a meagre catalogue of the causes, or the canvass must be filled up by my own fancy, which would at once, be an act of injustice to Mr. Henry, and a departure from that historical veracity, which it has been my anxious study, in every instance, to observe.

I have been told, for example, that in the year 1774, Mr. Henry appeared at the bar of the general court in defence of a married man by the name of Henry Bullard, indicted for the murder of a beautiful girl who lived in his house, to whom he had unfortunately become attached, and whom, in a moment of frantic