Part 2 (1/2)

”Of the science of law he knew alnorant that he was not only unable to draw a declaration or a plea, but incapable, it is said, of the most common or si a suit, giving a notice, ora motion in court”[29]

This conception of Henry's professional character, to which Wirt seems to have co-suppressed me in merchandise, Patrick ”turned his views to the law, for the acquisition or practice of which however, he was too lazy

Whenever the courts were closed for the winter session, he would o off with the deer, of which he was passionately fond, sleeping under a tent before a fire, wearing the sa all the dirt of his dress with a hunting-shi+rt He never undertook to draw pleadings, if he could avoid it, or to ed but as an assistant to speak in the cause And the fee was an indispensable preli to the applicant that he kept no accounts, never putting pen to paper, which was true”[30]

The last sentence of this passage, in which Jefferson declares that it was true that Henry ”kept no accounts, never putting pen to paper,”

is, of course, now utterly set aside by the discovery of the precious fee-books; and these orderly and circumstantial records almost as completely annihilate the trustworthiness of all the rest of the passage Let us consider, for example, Jefferson's statement that for the acquisition of the law, or for the practice of it, Henry was too lazy, and that much of the time between the sessions of the courts was passed by hi ourselves to the first three and a half years of his actual practice, in which, by the record, his practice was the smallest that he ever had, it is not easy for one to understand how a norant of itsthat brief period, the fees which he charged in 1185 suits, and in the preparation of al papers out of court, and still have been seriously addicted to laziness Indeed, if so al business could have been transacted within three years and a half, by a laho, besides being young and incoo off to the woods and hunt for deer while his clients were left to hunt in vain for hial business we ought to expect to be done by a young laas not incompetent, was not lazy, and had no inordinate fondness for deer-hunting It happens that young Thoan practice exactly seven years after Patrick Henry, and at precisely the sah under external circumstances far more favorable As a proof of his uncorapher, Randall, cites from Jefferson's fee-books the number of cases in which he was employed until he was finally drawn off froh, for the first four years of his practice, the cases registered by Jefferson[31] number, in all, but 504 It should be mentioned that this number, as it includes only Jefferson's cases in the General Court, does not indicate all the business done by hi those first four years; and yet, even with this allowance, we are left standing rather helpless before the proble lawyer--who leaves of the forest could never for once entice from the rustle of the leaves of his law-books--did nevertheless transact, during his own first four years of practice, probably less than one half asa sonorant, indolent, slovenly, client-shunning and forest-haunting Patrick

But, if Jefferson's charge of professional indolence and neglect on the part of his early friend fares rather ill when tested by thoserecords of his professional employments which were kept by Patrick Henry, a fate not e,--that of professional incompetence It is more than intiage in a general law practice, he did not know enough to do so successfully by reason of his ignorance of the al forms But the intellectual e to accept this view of Patrick Henry arises froible fee-books show that it was precisely this general law practice that he did engage in, both in court and out of court; a practice only a ser part of it consisting of the ordinary suits in country litigation; a practice which certainly involved the drawing of pleadings, and the preparation of al papers; a practice, moreover, which he seems to have acquired with extraordinary rapidity, and to haveas he cared for it These are items of history which are likely to burden the ordinary reader with no little perplexity,--a perplexity the elerandson of Patrick Henry: ”How he acquired or retained a practice so large and continually increasing, so perfectly unfit for it as Mr Jefferson represents hio further in the study of this man's life, we shall have before us a still further and still more definitely with the subject of his professional character, as that character itself became developed and matured Meantih to enable us to form a tolerably clear notion of the sort of lawyer he was down to the end of 1763, which arded as the period of his novitiate at the bar It is perfectly evident that, at the time of his admission to the bar, he knew very little of the law, either in its principles or in its for enius in the course of four weeks in the study of coke upon Littleton, and of the laws of Virginia If, noe are at liberty to suppose that his study of the law then ceased, we may accept the view of his professional incompetence held up by Jefferson; but precisely that is e are not at liberty to suppose All the evidence, fairly sifted, warrants the belief that, on his return to Hanover with his license to practice law, he used the next few months in the further study of it; and that thenceforward, just so fast as professional business came to his hands, he tried to qualify himself to do that business, and to do it so well that his clients should be inclined to coain in case of need Patrick Henry's is not the first case, neither is it the last one, of ato the barwell qualified We need not ireat learning in the law; but we do find it inorance in it The law, indeed, is the one profession on earth in which such success as he is proved to have had, is impossible to such inco to foret that we have to do with a enius reaches his results are necessarily his own,--are often invisible, are always soenius of Patrick Henry was powerful, intuitive, swift; by a glance of the eye he could take in what an ordinaryfor; his memory held whatever was once committed to it; all his resources were at instant coination, humor, tact, diction, elocution, were rich and exquisite; he was also a man of human and friendly ways, whom all men loved, and whoe if he actually fitted himself for the successful practice of such law business as was then to be had in Virginia, and actually entered upon its successful practice with a quickness the exact processes of which were unperceived even by his nearest neighbors

FOOTNOTES:

[18] Wirt, 16

[19] Curtis, _Life of Webster_, i 584

[20] First printed in the Philadelphia _Age_, in 1867; and again printed, froazine_, August, 1867, 90-93 I quote fro_ for August, 1867, 90

[22] Wirt, 16, 17

[23] Curtis, _Life of Webster_, i 584

[24] McMaster, _Hist of U S_ i 489

[25] I have carefully examined this testie Winston, MS

[27] Wirt, 18, 19

[28] These fee-books are now in the possession of Mr William Wirt Henry, of Rich_ for 1867, 93

[31] Randall, _Life of Jefferson_, i 47, 48

[32] William Wirt Henry, _Character and Public Career of Patrick Henry_, 3

CHAPTER IV

A CELEBRATED CASE

Thus Patrick Henry had been for nearly four years in the practice of the laith a vigor and a success quite extraordinary, when, late in the year 1763, he becaed with popular interest, and so well suited to the display of his own enius as an advocate, as to make both him and his case immediately celebrated

The side upon which he was retained happened to be the wrong side,--wrong both in law and in equity; having only this eleth in it, namely, that by a combination of circumstances there were enlisted in its favor precisely those passions of the , and at the saetic It only needed an advocate skilful enough to play effectively upon these passions, and a storm would be raised before which mere considerations of law and of equity would be swept out of sight

In order to understand the real issue presented by ”the Parsons'