Empire (27 page)

“What a sublime contest!” exclaimed Thomas Jefferson. Like most of the spectators who stood with him, he was completely enthralled by the drama taking place in the chamber. And like them, he did not seem to notice that he was pressed by bodies front, back, and on his sides. He was tall, though, and could see over the heads of the crowd before him. A few more spectators arrived at this moment, nudging Jefferson and others around him further into the public space.

“
Pardon, s’il vous plait
! I cannot see!” complained one of the newcomers. Jefferson, surprised, turned briefly to see a short, wiry Frenchman standing
on tiptoe to peer over the heads and shoulders that blocked his view.

The older burgesses, in the meanwhile, sat stunned and mute. The contradictory prospects of ruin by adoption and ruin by accommodation caused their many minds to spin fruitlessly in search of rebuttals. Both arguments were convincing. Given the time to compose their thoughts over Madeira, soothed by an evening breeze, they may have devised a riposte. But there was no time. Many of them, too, realized that there was nothing to say.

Patrick Henry, however, had more to say. His colleagues nearest him noticed that his face had grown red, and that his blue-gray eyes were set in a murderous fury whose object they did not envy. Henry rose, and those eyes fastened on Speaker Robinson. That man otherwise would have fallen back on the rationale that since Henry had already spoken, he could be denied recognition. But he knew by the ferocious set of Henry’s features that this man would not be silenced. In the hiatus, no one else had risen, and he was bound to allow this man to speak.

Henry had removed his hat and handed it again to Colonel Munford. He took a step away from his seat. “The honorable gentleman there,” he said, pointing boldly to Peyton Randolph, “spoke now, not of the rightness or wrongness of the resolve in question, but of ominous consequences should this House adopt it. I own that I am perplexed by his attention to what the Crown can and may do, and by his neglect to speak to the propriety of the resolve and the impropriety of this Stamp Act. Should he have examined for us the basis of his fears? Yes. But he did not. Perhaps he concluded that they were too terrible to articulate. So
I
shall examine them, for I believe that he and I share one well-founded fear: The power of the Crown to punish us, to scatter us, to despoil us, for the temerity of asserting in no ambiguous terms
our
liberty!
I
fear that power no less than he. But I say that such a fear, of such a power, can move a man to one of two courses. He can make a compact with that power, one of mutual
accommodation
, so that he may live the balance of his years in the shadow of that power, ever-trembling in soul-dulling funk lest that power rob him once again.

“Or — he can rise up, and to that power say ‘
No!
,’ to that power proclaim: ‘Liberty cannot, and will not, ever accommodate tyranny! I am wise to that Faustian bargain, and will not barter piecemeal or in whole
my
liberty!’”

Henry folded his arms and surveyed the rows of stony-faced members across the floor. “Why are you gentlemen so fearful of that word?” he demanded. “Why have not one of you dared pronounce it? Is it because you
believe that if it is not spoken, or its fact or action in any form not acknowledged, it will not be what it is? Well,
I
will speak it for you and for all this colony to hear!” His arms dropped, but the left rose again, and he shouted, stabbing the air with a fist, “
Tyranny! Tyranny! Tyranny!
” The arm dropped again. “There! The horror is named!” He suddenly strode to the clerk’s table, seized the bound pages of the Stamp Act that lay next to the golden mace, and violently thrust it back down, causing John Randolph and his clerks to wince, and loose papers to blow to the floor. “
Tyranny!
There is its guise, sirs! What a Janus-faced object it is, smirking at you on one side of its mask, shedding tears for you on the other! What a contemptible set of men who authored it, but whom you wish to
accommodate
! What a disgraceful proposition! And what a travesty you ask us to condone! ’Tis a mere pound of flesh we propose to remove from you, they tell you in gentle, proper language, and we promise that you will not bleed.
Hah!
” barked Henry with scorn. “You will recall how the Bard proved the folly and fallacy of that kind of compact! Are not accommodation and compromise another but greater form of it? He proved it in a comedy, sirs! You propose to prove it in a tragedy, and if you succeed in penning
finis
to your opus,
you
may rue the day you put your names on its title page!”

Henry wandered back in the direction of his seat, though his contemptuous glance did not leave the men on the opposition benches. “You gentlemen, you have amassed vast, stately libraries from which you seem to be reluctant to cull or retain much wisdom. Know that I, too, have books, and that they are loose and dog-eared from my having read them, and I have profited from that habit.” His voice now rose to a pitch that seemed to shatter the air. “History is rife with instances of ambitious, grasping tyranny! Like many of you, I, too, have read that in the past, the tyrants Tarquin and Julius Caesar each had his Brutus, Catline had his Cicero and Cato, and, closer to our time, Charles had his Cromwell! George the Third may —”

The opposition benches exploded in outrage. Burgesses shot up at the sound of the king’s name, released now from their dumb silence, and found their argument. They cried to the Speaker, “Treason!” “Treason!” “Enough! He speaks treason!” “Expel that man!” “Silence that traitor!” “Stay his tongue!” “Treason!”

Speaker Robinson was also on his feet, shaking his cane at Henry. “Treason, sir! Treason! I warn you, sir! Treason!”

Henry, determined to finish his sentence, shouted about the tumult,
“— may George the Third profit by their example!”

“Treason!” insisted more of the older members. “Sedition!” “Treason!” “Speaker, silence that man!”

Henry stood defiantly, facing his gesturing accusers, then raised a hand and whipped it through the air in a diagonal swath that seemed to sweep them all way. “If this be treason, then make the most of it!” he shouted. He stood for a moment more, then turned and strode back to his seat. But, he did not sit, for he was not finished.

John Randolph was shouting now, “Order in the House! Order in the House!” He hammered his gavel repeatedly until its wood handle stung his hand. His clerks bent to retrieve the papers blown to the floor. The Chief Clerk, angry that his position had not allowed him to join in the hue and cry of treason, shook the gavel at the excited throng behind the railing. “You people, there! Be quiet, or the House will order this chamber cleared of strangers!” He struck the gavel twice more.

Jack Frake had risen from his seat in silent, uncontrollable agreement with Henry. Etáin’s eyes were moist with approval. John Ramshaw stared at Henry with joyous wonder, and John Proudlocks with happy amazement. Reece Vishonn and Ralph Cullis exchanged looks of worried bafflement, undecided about whether their sense of danger came from Henry or from the men who talked and expostulated around them.

Thomas Jefferson rubbed the sides of his face with his hands, his eyes aglow with exaltation. “Oh, what eloquence! What heights men can climb!” he said to himself. “He speaks as Homer spoke!”

In a collective excitement, the standing crowd had pressed forward even closer so as not to miss a single word or action in this drama. Alphonse Croisset had taken out a little notebook and pencil, and, amid the jostling and hubbub, managed to scribble down in halting English the words and events he was witnessing through the shifting cracks of the noisy wall of bodies that imprisoned him.

When the House was quiet again, Speaker Robinson rose gravely from his chair and pointed his cane at Henry. “This man has spoken treason, sirs,” he declared with regret and spent anger, “and I am sorry to observe that no one here was loyal enough to His Majesty to stop him before he had gone so far.”

Hugh remarked to Edgar Cullis, “They are not afraid to pronounce
that
word!”

Cullis, though, stared back at him with wide, frightened eyes; he was
shaken by the violence of the event.

As the Speaker slowly settled back into his chair, Hugh said to his colleague, “I will defend him.” He rose and waited for the Speaker to recognize him.

Robinson glanced up from some horrible reverie of his own, and nodded to the waiting figure without recognition or care.

Hugh spoke. His words did not come easily now, for he exerted an effort that was alien to him, and with difficulty said each word as though he were renouncing his life and his right to it. “If the last speaker has affronted the Speaker or this House, I am certain he is ready to ask pardon. I have no doubt that he would prove his loyalty to His Majesty at the expense of the last drop of his blood. What he said now must be attributed to the interest of his country’s dying liberty, which is foremost in his heart, and in the heat of passion may have led him to say more than he intended. If he has said anything wrong, I am sure he would beg the pardon of the House and the Speaker.”

“Who speaks now,
s’il vous plait
?” queried Croisset, who could not see into the chamber. No one answered him, for no one heard his question. But the voice he heard reciting an apology sounded like the one that had provoked the protests. Croisset wrote rapidly in his notebook.

Hugh observed the mollified looks on the faces of the older burgesses, and sat down again.

“Sham piety!” muttered George Wythe.

John Robinson turned to look at Henry, who had not resumed his seat. Henry returned the glance with narrowed, waiting, unrepentant eyes. The Speaker averted those eyes, and stared at the floor before him. He was afraid of this man. He felt the expectant eyes of Peyton Randolph, Richard Bland, and all the older members on his person and position. He was now afraid of them. He could not force himself to require Henry to beg his pardon. There was something about the man that caused him to be both afraid of it, and afraid to betray it. And this man’s opposition to the defeated loan office proposal seemed somehow connected with the necessity of forgiving him. Robinson thought: Who am I to cast a stone at this man? With an imperceptible shake of his head, he said, in a curious manner of atonement, “The apology is accepted, and the matter is to be dropped.” He glanced again at Henry, to whom he felt transparent. Henry nodded once, and with a slight bow of his head, turned and resumed his seat. Robinson looked up and said to the Chief Clerk, “Mr. Randolph, you
will read this last resolution and conduct a vote.”

William Ferguson was instructed to read the fifth resolve for the last time. He adjusted his spectacles and obliged. As he read, Peyton Randolph’s mouth pursed in grim bitterness. Wythe and Bland, daggers in their eyes, both regarded the Speaker with a disappointment that verged on disdain; it would have been a small triumph to hear Henry himself stammer an apology. Robinson would not look in their direction. Their assessment of him did not change even when he was called on to voice his vote, and he said “Nay.”

Hopes for the defeat of the resolve were crushed when four older members shocked the “conservatives” and voted “Aye,” then were raised when four younger members voted “Nay.” Among the latter was Edgar Cullis, whose mind still reeled wildly from Randolph’s dire warning and Henry’s fiery vehemence.

* * *

The fifth resolve was adopted by the House by a margin of one vote, twenty to nineteen. Patrick Henry leaned back in his seat, his eyes closed in relief. Peyton Randolph’s features twisted in anger. Members on both sides of the House realized now whose vote could have caused a tie, whose vote would have been against not only the fifth resolve but all its companions: Edmund Pendleton’s.

That man had left Williamsburg in high dudgeon over the defeat of the loan office scheme. With his vote on the transcendent fifth resolve, Robinson could have exercised his capacity and privilege as Speaker and voted again to break the tie.

Pendleton’s conspicuous absence yesterday and today festered in the minds of the House’s leaders, particularly Peyton Randolph’s. Pendleton could have made a difference these last two days, he thought. His clear, orderly mind and calm but effective manner of speaking could have persuaded some of the younger members to oppose all the resolutions, and not just the fifth. And then this session could have ended on a far more amicable and satisfactory note.

Randolph glanced at Robinson. The Speaker looked beaten, ashamed, and troubled. The Attorney-General thought: My old friend has not long to occupy that chair; he is losing his hold on the House, and this day has cost him.

Robinson ordered an adjournment until the next morning. Again, the older members led the way out of the chamber, brushing hurriedly through the knot of spectators to reach the lobby doors. Peyton Randolph was one of the last of them to leave, following Wythe and Robinson. He was still incensed over the outcome. His world seemed to be falling apart, too; the resolves could have been negatived, but for the stubborn, spleenish obstinacy of one man — Pendleton! And then, he was defeated by a man half his age, a man whose license to practice law he should have opposed. Moreover, he was bested and confounded by that too-learned English youth from one of the most insignificant counties. All in all, a thoroughly humiliating day.

A tall, familiar figure stepped out of his way as he approached the lobby doors. It was a distant cousin, Thomas Jefferson, who regarded him with an odd species of sympathy that contrasted with the flushed contentment on his face. Here was another know-it-all boy, thought Randolph, his head filled with bookish learning and airy ideals. No doubt he enjoyed seeing a kinsman pelted with classical allusions and grand oratory. Pent-up anger got the best of Randolph, and he blurted into that young man’s face, wanting to erase the innocence from it, “By God, I would have given five hundred guineas for a single vote!”