the cultivated men of the inner circle, were nevertheless staunch
defenders of liberty and American rights and were perhaps
beginning to question, in these days of popular discussion,
whether liberty could very well flourish among men whose wealth
was derived from the labor of negro slaves, or be well guarded
under all circumstances by those who, regarding themselves as
superior to the general run of men, might be in danger of
mistaking their particular interests for the common welfare. And
indeed it now seemed that these great men who sent their sons to
London to be educated, who every year shipped their tobacco to
England and bought their clothes of English merchants with whom
their credit was always good, were grown something too timid, on
account of their loyalty to Britain, in the great question of
asserting the rights of America.

Jean Jacques Rousseau would have well understood Patrick Henry,
one of those passionate temperaments whose reason functions not
in the service of knowledge but of good instincts and fine
emotions; a nature to be easily possessed of an exalted
enthusiasm for popular rights and for celebrating the virtues of
the industrious poor. This enthusiasm in the case of Patrick
Henry was intensified by his own eloquence, which had been so
effectively exhibited in the famous Parson's Cause, and in
opposition to the shady scheme which the old leaders in the House
of Burgesses had contrived to protect John Robinson, the
Treasurer, from being exposed to a charge of embezzlement. Such
courageous exploits, widely noised abroad, had won for the young
man great applause and had got him a kind of party of devoted
followers in the backcountry and among the yeomanry and young men
throughout the province, so that to take the lead and to stand