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THE GREEN BAG
Alexander Graydon says of him in his Memoirs : "He never failed to throw the strongest light on his subjects, and seemed rather to flash than elicit conviction syllogistically. He produced greater orations than any other man I have ever heard." Wilson could not have been blind to the value of his services, and must have been deeply chagrined at the thwarting of his activities in Congress. He removed to An napolis, Maryland, where he devoted him self to practice, but yielding to the importun ities of friends, he returned after a year and took up his permanent residence in Phila delphia. He at once threw himself with the vigor and impetuosity of youth into active prac tice, at the same time rendering valiant service wherever possible to the cause of republican liberty in state and nation. Wil liam Rawle, the elder, a leader of "the old Bar," who had declined a proffer of the attorney-generalship of the United States at the hands of Washington, and whose great grandson, former President of the American Bar Association, Francis Rawle, had so prominent a part in arranging the 1906 Wilson Memorial services, in a brief memoir of "the elder Bar" delivered before the Bar of Philadelphia in 1824, said: "Few of those now present can recollect Wilson in the splendor of his talents and the fullness of his practice. Classically edu cated, .... his subsequent success in the narrow circle of country courts encouraged him to embark in the storm which after the departure of the British troops agitated the forum of Philadelphia. The adherents to the royal cause were the necessary subjects of prosecution, and popular prejudice seemed to bar the avenues of justice. But Wilson and Lewis and George Ross [a signer, with Wilson, of the Declaration of Independence] never shrunk from such con tests, and if their efforts frequently failed, it was not from want of pains or fear of danger." He had helped to organize the Republican Society, which was pledged to unyielding opposition to the Pennsylvania constitu
tion of '76, indeed to such an extent that its members, among whom were the ablest and most patriotic of Pennsylvanians, refused to accept any state office under that constitu tion, as that would compel them to take an oath to support its vagaries. Alexander Graydon, in his Memoirs, records that it was understood to have been principally the work of George Bryan, the political leader of the party in power, "in conjunction with James Cannon," who was professor of mathe matics in the College of Philadelphia, and Graydon adds, "it was severely reprobated by those who thought checks and balances necessary to a legitimate distribution of the powers of government." This man Cannon, who had helped to draft the instructions against independence to the Pennsylvania delegates in Congress in '75 and '76, so far lost his own balance as to declare in a public meeting that "all learning as an artificial restraint on the human understanding he had done with;" and he advised "our sov ereign lords, the people, to choose no lawyers or other professional characters called edu cated or learned; but to select men unedu cated, with unsophisticated understand ings;" and he declared that he "should be glad to forget the trumpery which had occu pied so much of his life." Such were some of the men who had removed Wilson from Congress and whom he was now engaging in the bitterest political struggle Pennsyl vania has known from that day to the pres ent, which is placing it on a very high plane of bitterness. Yet these men were not Tories, although their narrow vision often led them, in their antagonism to Wilson and his party, to acts which injured the cause of the United States more than any Tory had the power to do. In the announcement of the Republican Society published in March, 1779, Wilson declared: "While we oppose tyranny from a foreign power, we should think ourselves lost to every sense of duty and of shame were we tamely to acquiesce in a system of govern ment which in our opinion will introduce the same monster so destructive of humanity
