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Updated: May 27, 2025
Fortunately, however, we are not left in this case to grope our way toward the truth amid the ruins of the confused and decaying memories of old men. Since Wirt's time, there have come to light the fee-books of Patrick Henry, carefully and neatly kept by him from the beginning of his practice, and covering nearly his entire professional life down to old age.
But the intellectual embarrassment which one experiences in trying to accept this view of Patrick Henry arises from the simple fact that these incorrigible fee-books show that it was precisely this general law practice that he did engage in, both in court and out of court; a practice only a small portion of which was criminal, the larger part of it consisting of the ordinary suits in country litigation; a practice which certainly involved the drawing of pleadings, and the preparation of many sorts of legal papers; a practice, moreover, which he seems to have acquired with extraordinary rapidity, and to have maintained with increasing success as long as he cared for it.
The fluctuations in his engagements as a lawyer, during all these years, may be traced with some certainty by the entries in his fee-books. For the year 1765, he charges fees in 547 cases; for 1766, in 114 cases; for 1767, in 554 cases; for 1768, in 354 cases.
From about the time of his speech in "the Parsons' Cause," as his fee-books show, his practice became enormous, and so continued to the end of his days, excepting when public duties or broken health compelled him to turn away clients.
The last sentence of this passage, in which Jefferson declares that it was true that Henry "kept no accounts, never putting pen to paper," is, of course, now utterly set aside by the discovery of the precious fee-books; and these orderly and circumstantial records almost as completely annihilate the trustworthiness of all the rest of the passage.
As a proof of his uncommon zeal and success in the profession, his biographer, Randall, cites from Jefferson's fee-books the number of cases in which he was employed until he was finally drawn off from the law into political life. Oddly enough, for the first four years of his practice, the cases registered by Jefferson number, in all, but 504.
Eminent speakers of the Common Law Bar made between £2000 and £3500 per annum on circuit and at Westminster, without the aid of king's business; and still larger receipts were recorded in the fee-books of his Majesty's attorneys and solicitors.
Not only was he immediately retained by the defendants in all the other suits of the same kind then instituted in the courts of the colony, but, as his fee-books show, from that hour his legal practice of every sort received an enormous increase.
I have carefully examined this testimony, which is still in manuscript. Judge Winston, MS. Wirt, 18, 19. These fee-books are now in the possession of Mr. William Wirt Henry, of Richmond. Wirt, 18. Hist. Mag. for 1867, 93. Randall, Life of Jefferson, i. 47, 48. William Wirt Henry, Character and Public Career of Patrick Henry, 3.
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