And what has Virginia done for our Union?  Because sometime a rebel, as I was, I say now that it is my Union. [Applause.] As I have already said it was a Virginian—­Patrick Henry—­kinsman, by the way, of Lord Brougham, kinsman of Robertson, the historian, not a plebeian as some would represent, and one nominated by George Washington to be Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, which nomination was carried to him by Light-Horse Harry Lee—­I mention that because there is a notion that Patrick Henry was no lawyer.  He was a consummate lawyer, else George Washington would never have proposed him to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States; and he was a reading man, too, a scholar, deeply learned, and he printed at his own expense Soame Jenyns’ work upon the internal evidence of Christianity.  He was a profound student, not of many books, but of a few books and of human nature.  He first challenged Great Britain by his resolutions against the Stamp act in 1765, and then it was that Virginia, apropos of what you said to-day in your admirable discourse—­I address myself to Judge Cooley—­Virginia was the first free and independent people on earth that formulated a written complete Constitution.  I affirm that the Constitution of Virginia in 1776 was the first written Constitution known to history adopted by the people.  And the frontispiece and the fundamental principle of that Constitution, was the Bill of Rights—­that Bill of Rights, drawn by George Mason, you, gentlemen, in your Constitution of New York, from your first Constitution to your last, have adopted.  So when you expatiate upon the merits of written-over prescriptive constitutions, and with such eloquence and convincing force, I beg you to remember that this now forlorn and bereaved Commonwealth was the first people on earth that ever promulgated a formal, complete, written Constitution, dividing the functions of government in separate departments and reposing it for its authority upon the will of the people.  Jefferson gave you the Declaration of Independence in pursuance of a resolution adopted by the Legislature of Virginia, instructing the delegates in the Continental Congress to propose a Declaration of Independence.  The first suggestion of your more perfect union came from the Legislature of Virginia in January, 1786, and your Federal Constitution is construed upon the lines laid down by Edmund Randolph, and proposed in the convention as the basis of the Constitution which resulted in your now incomparable, as Mr. Gladstone says, incomparable instrument of government.

Furthermore, your great Northwest, your States of Ohio and Michigan, whose jurisprudence Judge Cooley so signally illustrates, Indiana and others, to whom are you indebted that this vast and fertile and glorious country is an integral part of our Union?  You are indebted to a Virginian, to Patrick Henry, then the Governor of Virginia, for the expedition to the Northwest headed by George Rogers Clark, as he was