the Colonists regarded as the unconstitutional acts of the Crown. The
patriotic lawyer of Boston, James Otis, shook the Colony with his
eloquence against the illegal encroachments and actual tyranny of the
English. Other popular orators of equal eminence, John and Samuel
Adams and Josiah Quincy, fanned the flames of discontent. Even the
most radical did not yet whisper the terrible word Revolution, or
suggest that they aspired to independence. They simply demanded their
"rights" which the arrogant and testy British Tories had shattered and
were withholding from them. At the outset rebels seldom admit that
their rebellion aims at new acquisitions, but only at the recovery of
the old.

Next to Massachusetts, Virginia was the most vigorous of the Colonies
in protesting against British usurpation of power, which would deprive
them of their liberty. 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