never to be forgotten part acted by the Duke of Richmond, the Marquis of Rockingham, the Bishop of Peterborough, the Dukes of Manchester, Cumberland, and Grafton in the House of Lords, and by General Conway, Lord John Cavendish, Colonel Barré, Mr. Hartley, Mr. Fox, and Mr. Burke in the House of Commons.

While these vindictive measures of the British ministry and Parliament were producing their natural effect on the sensibilities and reflections of the people of all the Colonies, there were peculiar causes in operation in Virginia which were rapidly preparing a thorough revulsion in the sentiments of loyal attachment to the mother country, for which she had been once so distinguished. The royal governor, Dunmore, giving way to the resentments which his recent contro

lords, Denbigh, undertook to reprimand him by declaring that those "who defend rebellion are themselves little better than rebels, and that there is but little difference between the traitor, and him who openly or privately abets treason." The Duke disdainfully replied by telling his lordship that "he was not to be deterred by loud words from the performance of his duty, and that he neither modified nor retracted anything he had said."

On another occasion during this same eventful session of Parliament, several of the opposition members of the House of Commons, Col. Barré and Mr. Burke particularly, having eulogized in

warm terms the heroism and magnanimity of Montgomery, Lord North censured them for bestowing such unqualified praises on one who was a rebel; when Mr. Fox rose, and with noble manliness and elevation of spirit, said, "The term rebel applied by the noble lord to that excellent person was no certain mark of disgrace, and therefore he was the less earnest to clear him of the imputation; for that all the great asserters of liberty, the saviours of their country, the benefactors of mankind in all ages, had been called rebels; that they even owed the constitution which enabled them to sit in that house to a rebellion."

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versy with the legislative authority of the Colony had kindled in his bosom, now organized, with the vessels of war that were under his control, a most disgraceful system of piratical warfare against those whom it was his duty to conciliate and protect. Collecting, on board his buccaneering fleet, a few deluded followers, and as many African slaves as he could seduce from their masters by promises of freedom, he ravaged the shores of the rivers which were open to him, plundered the property and burnt the dwellings of the inhabitants, and at length attempted the destruction of their towns. Repulsed at Hampton by a greatly inferior but gallant force assembled in haste for its defence, he ventured to land his motley array, reinforced with some companies of regulars, to meet the provincial troops at King's Bridge, where he was again defeated; and then took an ignominious revenge by laying the chief seaport of the Colony, Norfolk, in ashes.

In the prosecution of these barbarous and disgraceful hostilities, he had issued, on the 7th of November, 1775, a proclamation calling upon all persons capable of bearing arms "to repair to his standard, or be looked upon as traitors to His Majesty's crown and government," and declaring free all negroes, who shall join him "for the more speedily reducing this Colony to a proper sense of their duty to His Majesty's crown and dignity." An outrage of so deep a

dye as this, could admit of no aggravation from the superaddition of any other official iniquity: but it so happened that discoveries, just then made, proved that this infamous viceroy, while inviting the fellowship and coöperation of slaves as allies in a war of extermination against their masters, was at the same time, through his congenial instrument, Connolly, preparing to bring down the merciless savages of the forest, not only upon the western frontiers, but into the very heart, of the Colony. Such were the multiplied enormities of this chosen representative of royalty in America, that Washington, in a letter of the 26th of December, 1775, to Richard Henry Lee, speaking of the "diabolical schemes" of Dunmore, says that "nothing less than depriving him of life or liberty will secure peace

1 A letter of the Earl of Dartmouth to Lord Dunmore, dated the 2d of August, 1774, contains the following significant passage, which shows that this unscrupulous and vindictive agent of ministerial tyranny relied upon the employment of Indians and negroes as a regular means of sustaining the authority of his government, even before the occurrence of any open rupture with the inhabitants of the Colony.

"The hope," says the approving minister to the guilty governor, "you held out to us in your letter of the 1st of May, that, with a supply of arms and ammunition, you

should be able to collect from among the Indians, negroes, and other persons, a force sufficient, if not to subdue rebellion, at least to defend government, was very encouraging; but I find by your letters delivered to me by Lieutenant Collins, that you have been obliged, from the violence of the times, menaced by one branch of the legislature and abandoned by the other, to yield up all the powers of government and retire yourself on board the Fowey." See American Archives, (4th series,) vol. III. p. 6.

2 American Archives, (4th series,) vol. IV. p. 465.

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to Virginia; as motives of resentment actuate his conduct, to a degree equal to the total destruction of the Colony."

Under the influence of these various and powerful causes of alienation from the mother country, the public mind of America began to advance rapidly, though with unequal steps in both individuals and communities, to the stern and magnanimous resolve of final separation. The question of independence was now freely canvassed, not only in the consultations of patriots and in the conversations of friends and neighbours, but openly through the public press. In this state of things, in the month of April, 1776, delegates were elected by the several counties of Virginia to a new convention, which assembled in Williamsburg, on the 6th day of the following month. Of this body, destined to take so important a lead on the great question which then occupied the minds and hearts of all America, Mr. Madison, at the age of twenty-five years, was chosen a member for his native county of Orange.

CHAPTER V.

Proceedings of the Virginia Convention of 1776 - Instructions to their Delegates in Congress to propose Declaration of Indepen

dence Authorship of the Instructions - Select Committee to prepare a Declaration of Rights and Plan of Government - Mr. Madison a Member of the Committee - George Mason Author of Original Draft of Declaration of Rights - Amended in its last Article on Motion of Mr. Madison - Difference between Religious Toleration and Religious Freedom Deliberations of Select Committee on Plan of Government - Mr. John Adams suggests oneAnother proposed by Mr. Braxton, Delegate in Congress from Virginia - Letter of Patrick Henry on the Subject - Plan presented by a Member of the Select Committee - Resemblance between it and Constitution finally adopted- Principal Features of the Virginia Constitution of 1776- Republican Government as understood by the wise and patriotic Men who framed that Constitution - Distinction between a Republic and a Democracy — Question as to the Authorship of the Original Plan submitted to the Select Committee - Letter and Memorandum of Mr. Madison on the Subject Distinguished Lead of George Mason - Patrick Henry elected first Republican Governor- His Testimony in Favor of the Constitution of 1776 — Adjournment of the Convention.

WHEN it became manifest that the last and only security for the rights of America was in the valor of her sons, and the Colonies were all arming for the contest, Mr. Madison kindled with