attached to the offspring of his brain. He sent forward to Williamsburg two copies of his work, one addressed to Peyton Randolph, who was to preside over the convention, and the other to Patrick Henry. Mr. Henry was an idle, disorderly man of genius, "the laziest man in reading," says Jefferson, "I ever knew.” Whether he ever read this mass of manuscript (sixty or seventy pages of ordinary writing) will never be known; for nothing was ever heard of the copy sent to him. But the chairman, Mr. Randolph, took public notice of his copy. He announced to the Convention that he had received such a document from a member who was prevented from attending by sickness, and he laid it on the table for members to read if they chose. Most of them read it, and many approved it, though aware of its unsuitableness to the existing state of things. Probably not one member would have given it the stamp of his official approbation. It occurred to some, however, that it would make a timely pamphlet; and in that form it was published and extensively circulated, with this title, "A Summary View of the Rights of America." Copies were sent to England. Mr. Burke, who saw in it a weapon of offence against the ministry, changed it here and there, added sentences, and caused it to be published in England, where it ran through edition after edition. It procured for the author, to use his own language, "the honor of having his name inserted in a long list of proscriptions enrolled in a bill of attainder commenced in one of the Houses of Parliament, but suppressed in embryo by the hasty step of events." The list included about twenty names, among which were John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Peyton Randolph, and Patrick Henry.

In this pamphlet, the truth concerning both the nature and the history of the connection between the colonies and Great Britain the truth, without any reserves whatever-was stated for the first time; and it was so fully stated, that no one was ever able to add any thing to it. The Declaration of Independence was only the substance of this pamphlet given in a moderate, brief, official form.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE CONGRESS.

WHAT anguish, what humiliation, to be laid aside at such a time by a ridiculous summer disease, such as children get from eating green apples! Such is man, high and mighty as he fancies himself to be! It must be owned, however, that the Convention accomplished its work exceedingly well without Jefferson. Let us mark well the prodigious fact, that Virginia, in 1774, knew how to choose from her people, or, as Colonel Washington expressed it, her "ten thousand taxables," the seven men who best represented her, who could best serve her, and reflect most honor upon her. All the colonies could do as much. We cannot. It is one of the Lost Arts. These seven were all members of the House of Burgesses, and hence were familiarly known to the members of the Convention. Mr. Jefferson used to say that every individual of them was chosen for a particular reason. "Ben Harrison," as he styled him, was a jolly, selfindulgent, wealthy planter, without much knowledge of principles, or capacity for business; but he perfectly represented his class, long the ruling class of the colony, and therefore he was chosen one of the deputies. He had at home a son, eighteen months old, who was destined to preside over the nation, which the meeting of the Congress was to create. Richard Bland was chosen because he was considered the best writer in Virginia. Edmund Pendleton was regarded in the light of ballast; since, besides possessing a vast fund of legal knowledge, he was prudence personified. Peyton Randolph had a genius for presiding over an assembly, a man of weighty presence and imperturbable courtesy. Richard Henry Lee, the fluent and ornate orator, was sent to add argument, fact, and persuasion to Patrick Henry's awakening peals. Henry himself was not selected for his eloquence alone, but also because he was

the man of the people. He was the first eminent American instance of a certain combination of qualities that renders a man resistless before an unlettered people, a common mind, uncommon talents, and the instinct of being popular. To these six the convention added the shining figure of Colonel Washington, now forty-two years of age, who united in himself the three possessions that captivate the greatest number of persons, military glory, great wealth, and a fine person.

Virginia, I repeat, could choose her seven best and fittest in 1774; but she could no more have done it then than New York can do it now, if her grossly ignorant laborers of foreign lineage had been admitted to the suffrage.

Seldom has an assembly so sedulously veiled a radical purpose under conservative forms, as this Williamsburg Convention of 1774. Still protesting "inviolable and unshaken fidelity and attachment to our most gracious sovereign," still professing regard and affection for their friends and fellow-subjects in other parts of the empire, still declaring that they opposed every thing which might have "the most distant tendency to interrupt or in any wise disturb his majesty's peace," they nevertheless instructed their delegates, that, if that "despotic viceroy," General Gage, should presume to attempt to execute his threats against Massachusetts, such conduct would "justify resistance and reprisal." This might be termed a conditional declaration of war, and went far beyond any thing in Jefferson's draft of Instructions. The Convention also pledged Virginia to a suspension of her business as a tobacco-producing State, if the home government persisted in its system of oppression. No more exportation of produce, no more importation of merchandise! The convention only restrained their deputies in one particular. As it was then the first week of August, the tobacco crop was, to use the planters' term, "nearly made;" and, what was of more weight in their honest minds, it was eaten up, spent, pledged to London merchants for goods had and consumed. That crop, therefore, must go forward. Honor and necessity demanded it. But no more! Unless American grievances were redressed by Aug. 10, 1775, not a pound of Virginia tobacco should go to England; and Virginia would find some other way of earning her subsistence. As for tea, we view it with horror!" From this day, this very 6th of August, 1774, we will neither import it nor buy it, no, nor even use the

little we have on hand!

It is interesting to view the action of this convention in connection with Jefferson's paper. He, the philosopher, the man of books and thoughts, was chiefly concerned to get on paper the correct theory of the situation; but the practical, English-minded men of the convention, who shrank from the theory, had the clearest view of what was to be done. If General Gage stirs to carry out his proclamations, give him Lexington! Meanwhile, we will retort the starvation of Boston upon British merchants and manufacturers! Nothing could be better than Jefferson's theory, except this exquisite practice; and it was part of that practice to give the theory wings, and so communicate to it the intelligence of both countries.

Colonel Washington, a very practical head, conceived the idea that the Congress might desire to know something exact respecting the population, commerce, and resources of each colony. If it should come to a fight, it would certainly be desirable to know what means the central power would have at command. He took care to ascertain from George Wythe, Secretary of the House of Burgesses, how many men Virginia contained who were subject to taxation. Before leaving Williamsburg for Mount Vernon, he sent off a despatch to Richard Henry Lee, who had gone home, to ask him to lend his aid toward getting from the four custom-houses (one at the mouth of each river, York, James, Rappahannock, and Potomac) a statement of Virginia's annual exports and imports.

"P.S. If you should travel to Philadelphia by land, I should be glad of your company. Mr. Henry is to be at my house on his way, Tuesday, the 30th instant."

In those electric days people were too full of the great business in hand to make any record of their feelings; and hence it is only trifles recorded by chance that betray how vivid and universal was the interest in the subjects the Congress were to discuss. One Sunday morning, in this very August, 1774, an obnoxious tool of the ministry went to church in Plymouth, Massachusetts. As soon as he entered, a large number of the congregation rose, left the building, and went home! An act of this nature, which might not mean much in some communities, indicated in New England a deep and unchangeable resolve. Journalism was then an infant art. Interviewing-its latest acquisition, and one of its best,

though liable to abuse had not yet been borrowed from that great, first interviewer, James Boswell. Often, in those primitive days, the press could only reveal an intense and general excitement by silence. We know, from many sources, that Philadelphia was profoundly moved at the gathering of this Congress; that the whole population was astir; that two continents had followed with attentive minds those little groups of horsemen making their way through the woods from the various colonies to this central city; that kings, courts, ministries, politicians, philosophers, and peoples, in London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, St. Petersburg, and Ferney (capital of Voltaire's empire), were speculating upon what might come of this unique proceeding. But, when we look into the Philadelphia newspapers of the week, we find that they mentioned, in a quiet paragraph of three lines, that "the gentlemen appointed to meet in the General Congress are arrived." Nothing more! Now and then, during the session of fifty-two days, some paper presented to the Congress was published without comment; but no indication appears in the press, either of the unusual nature of the assembly, or of the peculiar interest felt in its proceedings, or of the measures it discussed.

The king employed a similar device, it seems; for, when he received at length the eloquent and pathetic petition which the Congress addressed to him in the name of the colonies, he sent it down to Parliament, as Franklin records, among a great heap of letters, handbills, newspapers, and pamphlets from America, and it was laid upon the table undistinguished by any recommendation, and unnoticed in the royal speech.

The sick Jefferson, while the deputies to the Congress were making their way to Philadelphia, resumed his journey, as it seems, and reached Williamsburg a few days after the Convention adjourned. There he performed an important act. The courts had been closed throughout Virginia for several months, which left the lawyers little to do. The law fixing the fees of the various officers attached to the courts having expired by its own limitation, an act renewing the fees was pending in the House of Burgesses when Lord Dunmore abruptly dismissed the House in May, 1774; and hence no courts had since been held. The people, not unwilling to bring home to their governor a sense of the absurd precipitancy of his conduct, appear to have submitted with pleasure to the deprivation. Jeffer