Note 69 — Chapter V · FIRST TRIUMPHS AT THE CAPITAL

For this splendid anecdote we are indebted to Judge John Tyler, who, then a youth of eighteen, listened to the speech as he stood in the lobby by the side of Jefferson. Edmund Randolph, in his History of Virginia, still in manuscript, has a somewhat different version of the language of the orator, as follows: “‘Cæsar had his Brutus, Charles the First, his Cromwell, and George the Third’—‘Treason, Sir,’ exclaimed the Speaker; to which Mr. Henry instantly replied, ‘and George the Third, may he never have either.’” The version furnished by John Tyler is, of course, the more effective and characteristic; and as Tyler actually heard the speech, and as, moreover, his account is confirmed by Jefferson who also heard it, his account can hardly be set aside by that of Randolph who did not hear it, and was indeed but a boy of twelve at the time it was made. L. G. Tyler, Letters and Times of the Tylers, i. 56; Wirt, 65.