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far overwent the timid hesitations of his colleagues, that his draught was subjected by them to material modifications ; and, when the famous Resolutions of Mr. Henry, in 1775, were proposed, it was not on any difference of principle that they were opposed by Wythe, Randolph, Pendleton, Nicholas, Bland and other worthies, who had long been the habitual leaders of the House ; but because those papers of the preceding session, had already expressed the same sentiments and assertions of right, and that an answer to them was yet to be expected.
In August, 1775, he was appointed a member of Congress, and in 1776, signed the Declaration of Independence, of which he had, in debate, been an eminent supporter. And subsequently, in the same year, he was appointed, by the Legislature of Virginia, one of a Committee to revise the laws of the state, as well of Bri tish, as of Colonial enactment, and to prepare bills for re-enacting them, with such alterations as the change in the form and princi ples of the government, and other circumstances, required : and of this work, he executed the period commencing with the revolu tion in England, and ending with the establishment of the new government here ; excepting the Acts for regulating descents, for religious freedom, an,d for proportioning crimes and punishments. In 1777, he was chosen speaker of the House of Delegates, be ing of distinguished learning in Parliamentary law and proceedings; and towards the end of the same year, he was appointed one of the three Chancellors, to whom that department of the Judiciary was confided, on the first organization of the new government. On a subsequent change of the form of that court, he was appoint ed sole Chancellor, in which office he continued to act until his death, which happened in June, 1806, about the seventy-eighth or seventy-ninth year of his age.
Mr. Wythe had been twice married ; first, I believe, to a daugh ter of Mr. Lewis, with whom he had studied law, and afterwards, to a Miss Taliaferro, of a wealthy and respectable family, in the neighborhood of Williamsburg ; by neither of whom did he leave issue.
No man ever left behind him a character more venerated than George Wythe. His virtue was of the purest tint ; his integrity inflexible, and his justice exact ; of warm patriotism, and, devoted as he was to liberty, and the natural and equal rights of man, he might truly be called the Cato of his country, without the avarice of the Roman ; for a more disinterested person never lived. Tem perance and regularity in all his habits, gave him general good health, and his unaffected modesty and suavity of manners, endear ed him to every one. He was of easy elocution, his language
