The young couple were settled on a farm by the joint efforts of their parents, where they endeavored to win a subsistence with the assistance of two or three servants. In two years he sold out and invested in another mercantile undertaking. In a few years this ended in bankruptcy, leaving him without a dollar and with a wife and an increasing family to support. He was devoted to music, dancing, and amusement, and was incapable of continuous physical or intellectual labor. He had devoted himself to desultory reading of the best kind, and made himself acquainted with the history of England, of Greece, and of Rome. He therefore undertook to win a support by the profession and the practice of the law, and after a brief pretence of preparation, by the generosity of the bar at that period, was admitted to practice. The vigor of his intellect, his powerful logic, and his acute analysis induced the examining committee to sign his certificate.
That committee consisted of Mr. Lyons, then the leader of the Provincial bar, afterward president-judge of the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia; Mr. John Lewis, an eminent lawyer, and John Randolph, afterward knighted and as Sir John Randolph, the king's Attorney General for Virginia. Henry was twenty-four when admitted to the bar, and for three years did nothing.
Under the law of Virginia the people, without regard to religious belief, were bound to pay a tax of so many pounds of tobacco per poll for the support of the clergy. The parson of each parish was entitled to sixteen thousand pounds of tobacco per annum. When the price of tobacco was low this imposition was borne not without grumbling. When short crops or increased demand raised the price, the General Assembly of the colony by law allowed the people the option to pay their poll-tax in tobacco, or to commute it at the fixed price of 16s. and 8d. per hundred. When the market price was above that the tax was paid in currency; when it was below, in tobacco. When tobacco rose to 50s. per hundred the parsons demanded tobacco for their salaries instead of 16s. 8d. per hundred. The King in council declared the Commutation Act void, and the parsons brought suit for their salaries. The defendants pleaded the Commutation Act in defence; to this plea the plaintiffs demurred; and the court, as it was bound to do, gave judgment for the plaintiff on the demurrer. The only question then left was the quantum of damages, to be assessed by a jury. The case selected for a test was the case of the Rev. James Maury against the sheriff of Hanover County and his sureties. It was set for trial at the December term of the County Court of Hanover, 1763. Henry was retained for the defendant, and made an argument so forcible, so conclusive, and so eloquent that it has made his fame as "the greatest orator who ever lived," as Mr. Jefferson wrote of him. He took the ground that allegiance and protection in government are reciprocal, that the King of Great Britain had failed to protect the people of Virginia in their rights as Englishmen, and that therefore they owed no allegiance to him and he had no right to declare laws made by them void, therefore his nullification of the Commutation Act was void and of no effect. The jury found for the plaintiff with one penny damages, and thus ended the attempt to rely upon the power of the king to set aside laws made by Virginia for her own government.
It was the first announcement in America of the radical revolutionary doctrine that government is a matter of compact with the people, and when the former breaks the agreement, the latter are absolved from obedience to it.
The next year Henry removed to Louisa County and was employed by Dandridge in the contested election case of Dandridge v. Littlepage before the House of Burgesses for a seat in that body. When the Stamp Act passed in 1765, Mr. William Johnson, member of the House of Burgesses for Louisa County, resigned his place to make way for Henry, who was elected to fill the vacancy.
This body consisted of some of the ablest and most illustrious Americans who ever lived. George Washington, Peyton Randolph, Richard Bland, Edmund Pendleton, George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee were all members, and Henry at the first session won a place in the front rank among them. In May, 1765, he introduced a series of resolutions, reiterating and enlarging the propositions of the parson's case, and declaring that the people of Virginia are entitled to all the rights of British subjects, and that they alone, through their General Assembly, "have the sole right and power to lay taxes and impositions on this colony," and that any attempt by any other authority "has a manifest tendency to destroy British as well as American freedom." They were opposed by the old members, but the eloquent logic of Henry, backed by Johnston, a member from Fairfax, carried them by a close vote, the last one by a majority of one.
In this debate, Henry in a passion of eloquence exclaimed, "Cæsar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell, and George III.—--" "Treason," cried the Speaker and the House—--"may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it."
The next day, the House in a panic, reconsidered, rejected, and expunged from the Journal the last resolution, which asserted the sole right of taxation in Virginia, and denied it to Parliament.
Henry continued a member of the House of Burgesses from Louisa County until the close of the Revolution. He led Virginia in resistance to the tax on tea, and in organizing armed resistance to the Mother Country by all the colonies. He was among the first of the Americans who understood that liberty could only be preserved by defending it by force.
He was sent as a deputy from Virginia to the first Continental Congress, which met at Philadelphia in September, 1774. He at once took a commanding influence in that body, and on its adjournment in October, returned home.