"Treason! The gentleman has spoken treason," bellowed a worthy legal gentleman respresenting the Crown and the Reverend James Maury. [Another ancestor, 4-G grandfather. Henry, by W. W. Henry, Vol. I.] He was denouncing young Patrick Henry, generally described as a lazy, trifling, hopeless, briefless, poverty-stricken lawyer of the time. Young Patrick was legally representing the people, the so-called "vulgar herd" and this herd was "not of the class of gentlemen" [Memoirs of a Huguenot Family, Fontaine and Maury.] represented by my reverend pre-progenitor, who, were he alive today, would vote against me, and whom I should boycott by attending somebody else's church.

Here came the first flash of Patrick Henry's genius, and the spark of revolution for the Piedmont region covering all the Southeastern sea-board. And in advance you must know that I shall with great reluctance side against the good Mr. Maury, who was considered by everyone respectable and honest, and learned in the classics, as stated by one of his pupils, Thomas Jefferson.

A tobacco devaluation act, tobacco being the standard of currency, had been enacted by the House of Burgesses of the Colony of Virginia. It cut out about two-thirds of the income of the reverend clergy. Worse, the legislation was impudently phrased, and without any mention of royal assent from His Majesty the King. Mr. Maury took to the law.

And the parallels, economically, politically and financially, are so like today as to be astonishing. The quirk of a distant court, whether in Washington or in far-off London was shown, where language of "Gentlemen" is often used to fool "the vular herd" or, more specifically, where representative government is destroyed by remote courts with still more remote language. Here the "general welfare" words later to be placed in our Constitution, first came into prominence. (Patrick Henry used the words "general utility of the people.") Deflation by the money-groups, and the breakdown of the people because of it, and liberty of speech, which is as vital now as it was then, all these were elements of the long controversy.

Some of our ancestors were already getting conservative and proud. Though many of them had been deported for debt, no sooner had they paid their debts or gotten beyond the debtor's jail of merrie olde England than they put on airs and made lords and ladies of themselves, and set about concentrating wealth in their own hands, and talking loftily about loyalty, the King and the "Constitution"!

It is not necessary to prove this, for the colonial history is sufficiently voluminous and definite to show it. The bankers of London, the tight little Scotch merchants who emigrated to Tidewater Virginia (and from whom many of us are descended), the clergy, the vested interests in general, had no sympathy whatever for the general run of colonists, and used them as oranges from which to squeeze the juice of profit and taxes, and then to throw their worthless skins away.

Tobacco debts were already causing ruinous farming, and erosion and destruction of the land. Even in these early times, over-cropping had begun. The same system was clamped on the colonists as that of agriculture today, and the people in Virginia simply could not pay their advances where they were gypped in the first place and stuck with compound interest after that.

The condition of the colony was intolerable. So the House of Burgesses of Virginia, for the second time in 1758, enacted the law, exactly like the gold devaluation act in purpose, and they called it "An Act to enable the inhabitants of this colony to discharge their tobacco debts for the present year." It was temporary, or emergency; they, like we New Dealers today, were not candid enough to admit that the economic policies were really intended to be, and of a right should be, permanent. The act was good medicine for the Colonials. They could pay their debts at the old rates by, in effect, selling their tobacco for three times as much, and putting two-thirds in their pockets.

Then came a war of pamphlets begun by the clergy. Replies were prepared, each pamphlet denouncing the other side in bitter terms. While Sam Adams was making the use of pamphlets the basis of revolution in the Masachusetts Colony, the devaluation controversy was doing the same thing in the Piedmont region.

Looking at the old pamphlets of the clergy now, we find them much like the stupid, reactionary pamphlets of fake organizations today. Either the Liberty League sent its brain-trusters in to crib on our reactionary ancestors, or else stupidity is natural, and comes in cycles.

The clergy had a direct financial interest, but they were also out in the front for the vested interests of the day, backed by the reactionary Crown, with his "Lords of the Committee for Trade and Plantations," a Committee of the Privy Council—the Supreme Court for the colonies. In the pamphlets the horror of inflation was described, the people were enjoined to be honest and pay their debts in the hard money of tobacco (hard indeed, from the toil of growing it); and the big shots worried themselves to death over the apparent growing dishonesty and laziness of the "common herd."

The people were not fooled, however. Soon a pamphlet was issued in reply to the parsons by Col. Bland and Col. Carter, a work of biting invective. Printers throughout the Colony of Virginia then refused to print anything for the preachers—who thereupon charged violation of "freedom of the press." On this one point the preachers were right. So the preachers had to go to Maryland to print their next one, "The Colonels Dismounted." More was said by the reverend gentlemen about the sanctity of contracts and due process of law, with exhortations to observe the ancient virtues of True Englishmen, and their British Forefathers. But the Wicked People were Deaf, Dumb and Blind.

The original suit filed by the clergy had been won on technicalities and demurrers. Thank goodness most of my people were on the right side, for John Lewis [another relative] represented the people, but lost. He did not like this, but could go no further. The House of Burgesses, elected by the people, had no idea of obeying the Crown, and were furious. So they met and agreed to pay all expenses for fighting the Clergy and the Crown to the limit. It was in this case before the jury that Patrick Henry was the attorney.

This is a little ahead of the story, but the House was becoming impatient of its laws being knocked out by the Lords of the Privy Council. People were talking of the British "Constitution," and were getting sick of the King and his courts overriding the rights of the colonists. Nevertheless, the triumph of the clergy, Wirt says, was complete, and "they sailed before the wind"—as he puts it, not knowing their puffed out sails would be slashed to pieces.

Since the case had been won by the Clergy and the Crown, procedure required it to be sent to a jury under instructed verdict, where the twelve good Englishmen and true should faithfully measure the damages. The farmers and the people were enraged, and feeling against the clergy was scorching hot. It had been hard for the farmers to get a lawyer. All the lawyers were scared. Most of them were Crown conscious, full of Privy Council inhibitions, and, since it concerned their legal pocket-books, regarded the people as striking at the Ark of the Covenant. In desperation the people hired the unknown quantity, the trifling young Mr. Patrick Henry, nephew of Rev. Patrick Henry, who had joined Mr. Maury in the suit as one of the complainants, and son of Col. John Henry, the presiding magistrate of the court before which the case was to be tried.

Patrick lost no time in working up the case. He was dead broke and needed the money. Moreover, he liked the job, and although Mr. Maury says that he took it merely for a fee, and would have represented either side, I have my doubts about it, for this was in Henry's early days, before he turned reactionary.

The case was tried in Hanover Court House, built in 1735. It stands there today, and has been in actual use ever since. Henry did not have to walk far, for across the road was the Hanover Inn, one of the biggest hotels then in the Colonies. It stands there today also, almost as it was two hundred years ago, and is conducted by one of his direct descendents. People thereabouts still talk about Patrick, who married the inn-keeper's daughter, and tended bar for his father-in-law while he studied law.

There were more trees then, the little Court House stood there under great chestnuts and oaks. "The people were in great ferment," but the clergy, who had won on technicalities, "came to look down on the opposition . . . and to enjoy the final triumph." Outside the Court House, the people came noisily on their horses, not yet awed by the King's Clergy and the court. Squinch-eyed Scotch merchants, the clergy, and officers of the Crown, came in their vehicles.

Like courts today, the fat-boys' lawyers jostled, pushed, played dignified, oh'd and ah'd, and acted proud. The clergy, all mounted pompously on the High Bench like a dummy House of Lords, sat smirking and taking sly looks at each other. Mr. Maury looked very righteous, for not only was the Crown on his side, but the British Constitution and God as well. The people were intimidated by all these Crown Worthies. They were embarrassed. As for Henry, he had met his uncle, the Rev. Patrick Henry, as he approached in his carriage, and talked him into leaving, so that there should be no embarrassment. But of the court, Wirt says:

"The array before Mr. Henry's eyes was now most fearful. On the bench sat more than twenty clergymen, the most learned men in the colony, and the most capable, as well as the severest critics before whom it was possible for him to have made his debut."

Mr. Maury objected to the jury, for lo and behold, some were not "gentlemen," others were "dissenters," still others of a strange sect known as Disciples of the New Light, or something. But the Sheriff, who must have been an elected officer, overruled the gentlemen, and allowed persons from the "vulgar herd" to serve on the jury.

With an economic and a constitutional issue almost exactly as today, Henry opened by saying the people were in bondage who could not enact their own laws through their own representatives. He told them not to pay attention to the superficial nonsense of the classes who would despoil them, and not to "rivet the chains of bondage around your necks" by blind obedience to a Privy Council or court far away. He said that an example should be made of my ancestor Mr. Maury and his kind. Although it was one of the most vitriolic and abusive speeches made in American history, but all of it was true, and said with bloody eloquence.

The case was presented to the jury. There were no stop watches then, but it is said the jury was out but "a fleeting moment"; it was one of those cases where the jury simply walked around in a circle and came back to do exactly what Mr. Henry had told them to do: make an example of the clergy and the vested interests and give the people a chance to pay their debts. In addition, they told the high court, the Privy Council, and the King to jump in the lake. To add insult to injury, they followed the technicality of awarding damages in accordance with an instructed verdict, but the damages awarded were two pence!

Henry, borne from the court room on the shoulders of the people, was now famous, the people's lawyer and advocate of Virginia, soon to be known as the greatest orator in the Thirteen Colonies.

The first flare for revolution burned in the hearts of the people. They did not understand economics in the modern sense, but they knew that if they should live on as a free people, they could not dispense with representative government, or allow their laws to be knocked out by kings and Supreme Courts far away.

But the big shots of the times were unconvinced. They egged the clergy on. They did not know the next mandate of the people would be accompanied with arms. Mr. Maury, in a letter to Mr. Camm, another preacher, said:

"After the court adjourned, he (Mr. Henry) apologized to me for what he had said, alleging that his sole view in engaging in the cause, and in saying what he had, was to render himself popular. You see, then, it is clearly a point in this person's opinion that the ready road to popularity here is to trample under foot the interests of religion, the rights of the Church, and the prerogative of the Crown. If this be not pleading for the 'assumption of a power to bind the King's hands,' as is inconsistent with the dignity of the Church of England, and manifestly tends to draw the people of these plantations from their allegiance to the King, tell me, my dear sir, what is so, if you can. Mr. Cootes, merchant on James River, after court, said 'he would have given a considerable sum out of his own pocket, rather than his friend Patrick should have been guilty of a crime but little, if anything, inferior to that which brought Simon, Lord Lovatt, to the block;' and justly observed that he exceeded the most seditious and inflammatory harangues of the tribunes of old Rome."

Which to me sounds like a lecture on the Supreme Court by Bishop Manning.

And now the story changes to Rev. Camm, who had stirred up the trouble in the first place, and in which way I shall be able to excuse my reverse ancestor, Mr. Maury, as best I can. For Mr. Maury had had enough, though he wrote such a letter, and dropped out of the case. Before he died, he got on the right side and helped fan the Revolution. He wrote extensively and well against the British. But in the Parson's Case, Mr. Camm, a bitter-ender, appealed to the Lords of the Privy Council.

His appeal is one of the most striking examples of judicial mumbo-jumbo in the history of nations. It was to prove even lords and judges can see and learn, and hear from a distance, and are not always like the picture of justice, blind-folded and deaf. For all England had heard the rumble of discontent and revolution in the colonies. The people had affronted the King, and had told the old buzzard to mind his business. So Mr. Camm, learning nothing, with all his wigged John W. Davises and other smirky lawyers, advocates and King's counsellors, duly and pompously came before the Lords of the Privy Council. But the mighty tribunal had already transgressed its authority so much and so often, and having at last realized they could not force the people to do the impossible, in effect affirmed the case of the people back in Virginia, on a technicality. They held some trifling technicality stood in the way, and they refused to hear the case. Thus the high and mighty court of the British Empire reversed itself, without the courage to give its reasons. Still, the court was vindicated, for it used several Latin words, which no one understood even then. It was similar to our own Supreme Court's decision of four-to-four in the New York unemployment insurance case, which holds the Social Security Act suspended in mid-air.

But the colony had established a point.

Thus, nearly two centuries later, history projects the same picture on the screen. Flub-dubs and fat-boys, gentlemen in heavy silk robes that must still be tailored in Europe, walk ponderously with assumed dignity; others ride on new contraptions rolling on four wheels and in great steel birds flying through the sky; all of this show in lieu of our lordly processions and coaches-of-six in days gone by. And they "sail before the wind." Will the storm slash them to pieces?