Lion of Liberty Read Online Free Page B

not on . . . law, in which he no doubt soon discovered his deficiencies, but . . . on the laws of nature and of nations, on the policy of the feudal system, and on general history, which last he found to be his stronghold.”
    â€œâ€˜You defend your opinions well, sir,’ Randolph conceded. ‘I will never trust to appearances again. Mr. Henry, if your industry be only half equal to your genius, I augur that you will do well and become an ornament and an honor to your profession.’” 15 And so, with almost no knowledge of law,
Henry returned to his native hill country and, on April 15, 1760, took an oath and gained admission to the bar.
    In fact, Henry’s legal training was no less than that of most country lawyers—and more than many. America had no law schools, and only a handful of wealthy young men could afford to travel to London to study law at the Inns of Court. The rest learned their trade through a combination of self-study and apprenticeships with “master lawyers.” Once in practice, most lawyers did little more than draw up bills of sale, deeds, contracts, and wills, leaving serious disputes in small towns and rural areas to mediation by sheriffs and ministers. For court cases, jury pools were so small that jurors, lawyers, and defendants were on a first-name basis and defense lawyers routinely packed juries with friends and neighbors.
    With his father, step brother, and five other family members presiding in the Hanover County Court, it was not surprising that Patrick Henry proved phenomenally successful—so much so that he attracted clients from the farthest points of neighboring counties to appear with him in his father’s court. In the closing months of 1760 after receiving his license, Patrick Henry handled 197 cases; by 1763 his caseload had climbed to 374 and his income had reached more than £600, or about $42,500 in today’s currency—an enormous sum in eighteenth-century rural Virginia. In the first three years of practice, he handled 1,185 suits, in addition to preparing legal documents and dispensing legal advice in his father-in-law’s tavern.
    To his credit, Henry kept his word to Nicholas and studied the full range of legal texts, including Sir William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England , William Bohun’s Declarations and Pleadings , Giles Jacob’s The Compleat Chancery-Practiser , Samuel Pufendorf’s The Law of Nature and Nations , and other tomes. Little by little, he acquired as much knowledge of British law as any lawyer in Virginia, and on December 1, 1763, after three years of practicing mostly “paper law,” he stepped onto center stage for his inaugural appearance in a major courtroom drama—the Parsons’ Cause.
    But as his father the judge and the rest of the packed courtroom awaited his closing argument, Patrick Henry stood silent, his head bowed, staring at the floor, apparently at a loss for words. His clients could only fear the worst for their case.

Chapter 2
    Tongue Untied
    Patrick Henry’s clients had good reason to despair. Depending on his summation, many could lose their properties and all their assets. In an earlier trial, the court had already found them guilty of failure to pay their taxes to the Anglican Church, as required by law—regardless of their religion. This was their second trial to determine how much they owed—a far more complex calculation than it might seem.
    In the absence of currency, Virginia required each parish to pay the Anglican minister 16,000 pounds of tobacco a year, which the minister then sold in the open market. Parish landowners paid into the total in proportion to the acreage they had under cultivation. Ministers earned more when tobacco prices rose and absorbed losses when they fell, but over the years they earned an average of about two pence per pound. In 1758, however, a catastrophic drought devastated Virginia’s tobacco