Although Virginia had no capital city like
Boston, in which the chief political leaders might gather and discuss
and plan, and mobs might assemble and equip with physical force the
impulses of popular indignation, the Old Dominion had means, just as
the Highland clans or the Arab tribes had, of keeping in touch with
each other. Patrick Henry, a young Virginia lawyer of sturdy Scotch
descent, by his flaming eloquence was easily first among the spokesmen
of the rights of the Colonists in Virginia. In the "Parsons Cause," a
lawsuit which might have passed quickly into oblivion had he not seen
the vital implications concerned in it, he denied the right of the
King to veto an act of the Virginia Assembly, which had been passed
for the good of the people of Virginia. In the course of the trial
he declared, "Government was a conditional compact between the King,
stipulating protection on the one hand, and the people, stipulating
obedience and support on the other," and he asserted that a violation
of these covenants by either party discharged the other party from its
obligations. Doctrines as outspoken as these uttered in court, whether
right or wrong, indicated that the attorney who uttered them, and the
judge who listened, and the audience who applauded, were not blind
worshippers of the illegal rapacity of the Crown.
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