Page:Sketches of the life and character of Patrick Henry.djvu/83

 in life, as the reader will presently see by his own statement.

The resolutions having been prepared in the man- ner which has been mentioned, were shown by Mr. Henry to two members only, before they were offered to the house; these were, John Fleming, a most respecta- ble member for the county of Cumberland, and George Johnston, for that of Fairfax.*

The reader will remark that the first four resolutions, as left by Mr. Henry, do little more than re-affirm the principles advanced in the address, memorial and re- monstrance of the preceding year; that is, they deny the right assumed by the British parliament, and assert the exclusive right of the colony to tax itself There is an important difference, however, between those state papers and the resolutions, in the point of time and the circumstances under which they were brought forward, for the address and other state papers were prepared before the stamp act had passed; they do nothing more, therefore, than call in question, by a course of respect- ful and submissive reasoning, the propriety of exercising the right, before it had been exercised; and they are, moreover, addressed to the legislature of Great Britain, by the ivay of prevention, and in a strain of decent re-

��* Judge Winston, on the authority of Mr. Henry himself. The report of the day, that Mr. Johnston drew the resokitions, is certainly unfounded. Mr. Johnston, now known only from the circumstance of his having seconded Mr. Henry's resolutions, is one of those many friends of liberty, who are sliding fast from the recollection of their country, and who deserve to be rescued from oblivion, by a more particular notice, than it is in my power to bestow upon them. Of Mr. Johnston, I can learn only, that he was a lawyer in the Northern Neck, highly respectable in his profession ; a scholar, distin- guished for vigour of intellect, cogency of argument, firmness of character, love of order, and devotion to the cause of rational liberty— in short, exactly calculated by his love of the cause, and the broad and solid basis of his under- standing, to uphold the magnificent structure of Henry's eloquence.

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