As regards the substance of the speech then made, it will not be safe for us to confide very much in the supposed recollections of old men who heard it when they were young. Upon the whole, probably, the most trustworthy outline of it now to be had is that of a gentleman who declares that he wrote down his recollections of the speech not long after its delivery. According to this account, Patrick Henry-- "told them that the late proceedings of the Virginian Assembly had filled him with apprehensions and alarm; that they had planted thorns upon his pillow; that they had drawn him from that happy retirement which it had pleased a bountiful Providence to bestow, and in which he had hoped to pass, in quiet, the remainder of his days; that the State had quitted the sphere in which she had been placed by the Constitution, and, in daring to pronounce upon the validity of federal laws, had gone out of her jurisdiction in a manner not warranted by any authority, and in the highest degree alarming to every considerate man; that such opposition, on the part of Virginia, to the acts of the general government, must beget their enforcement by military power; that this would probably produce civil war, civil war foreign alliances, and that foreign alliances must necessarily end in subjugation to the powers called in. He conjured the people to pause and consider well, before they rushed into such a desperate condition, from which there could be no retreat. He painted to their imaginations Washington, at the head of a numerous and well-appointed army, inflicting upon them military execution. 'And where,' he asked, 'are our resources to meet such a conflict? Where is the citizen of America who will dare to lift his hand against the father of his country?' A drunken man in the crowd threw up his arm, and exclaimed that he dared to do it. 'No,' answered Mr. Henry, rising aloft in all his majesty, 'you dare not do it: in such a parricidal attempt, the steel would drop from your nerveless arm!' ... Mr. Henry, proceeding in his address to the people, asked whether the county of Charlotte would have any authority to dispute an obedience to the laws of Virginia; and he pronounced Virginia to be to the Union what the county of Charlotte was to her. Having denied the right of a State to decide upon the constitutionality of federal laws, he added, that perhaps it might be necessary to say something of the merits of the laws in question.[471] His private opinion was that they were good and proper. But whatever might be their merits, it belonged to the people, who held the reins over the head of Congress, and to them alone, to say whether they were acceptable or otherwise to Virginians; and that this must be done by way of petition; that Congress were as much