Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. I.djvu/154

120 LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS the people of England as the British legislature had to pass laws for the government of the people of Virginia. "Can any one reason be assigned," he asked, "why a hundred and sixty thousand electors in the island of Great Britain should give law to four millions in the states of America?" The draught, indeed, was so radical on every point that it seemed to the ruling British mind of that day mere insolent burlesque. It was written, how ever, by Jefferson in the most modest and earnest spirit, showing that, at the age of thirty-one, his radical opinions were fully formed, and their ex pression was wholly unqualified by a knowledge of the world beyond the sea. This draught, though not accepted by the convention, was published in a pamphlet, copies of which were sent to England, where Edmund Burke caused it to be republished with emendations and additions of his own. It procured for the author, to use his own language, "the honor of having his name inserted in a long list of proscriptions enrolled in a bill of attainder." The whole truth of the controversy was given in this pamphlet, without any politic reserves. In March, 1775, Jefferson, who had been kept at Monticello for some time by illness, was in Rich mond as a member of the convention which assem bled in the parish church of St. John to consider what course Virginia should take in the crisis. It was as a member of this body that Patrick Henry,