gates from all the colonies, and appointed seven deputies to represent Virginia. Of these Mr. Harrison was one.

On the fifth of September, 1774, the first continental congress met at Carpenters' Hall, in the city of Philadelphia, and Mr. Harrison, who was present on that day, had the satisfaction of seeing a delegate from his own state, raised by the unanimous approbation of the assembly, to the presidential chair.

In the journals of this assembly, which at best present but a meagre outline of the proceedings of a legislative body, we find but few notices of Mr. Harrison during the short session of 1774. Indeed its character greatly varied from those which succeeded it. We look in vain for that untiring activity, that constant resource, that attention to every object of government, which are features so strongly marked in the subsequent assemblies. The delegates felt themselves placed in a difficult situation, in which, while they firmly maintained their own rights, they had yet to avoid every act whose violence might palliate or excuse the arbitrary proceedings of the mother country. With a manly dignity and forbearance, while every day was bringing intelligence of fresh insult and injustice, they determined that every appeal to right, to reason, and to affection, should be tried before they resorted to the sword. At this day, when we read the addresses of this venerable body, we are at a loss to conceive the infatuation which was deaf to their reasoning, as well as the feeling which was untouched by their eloquence. After a session of less than two months, they determined to await the effect of their proceedings, and returned quietly among the body of their countrymen, who regarded the simple expression of their wishes with as much zeal, as if it had been strengthened by the firmest sanctions of religion and law.

On the twentieth of March, 1775, the second convention of delegates from the several counties and corporations of Virginia, met in the city of Richmond. Of this body also Mr. Harrison was a member. He had the satisfaction of seeing, in their first act, his country's approval of the measures in which he had assisted. A resolution was passed, in which the convention expressed their unqualified approbation of the measures of congress, and declared that they considered the whole continent as under the highest obligations to that respectable body, for the wisdom of their counsels, and their unremitted endeavours to maintain and preserve inviolate, the just rights and liberties of their countrymen. To this they especially added their warmest thanks to the worthy representatives of the colony, for their cheerful undertaking and faithful discharge of the very important trust reposed in them.

These resolutions were shortly followed by a proposition to create in the province a military force, and to put it in a state of defence. Mr. Harrison was opposed to this measure as premature, and in his opposition he was supported by most of those who had sat with him in congress, and by Wythe, Nicholas, and others, the leading patriots of the province. It need scarcely be said that this opposition arose from no personal fears, and from no unmanly spirit in regard to the liberties of the country. It sprung from those views and motives which had actuated the congress itself; it arose from a wish to await the issue of their peaceful efforts, before they plunged into the unknown occan of civil warfare; and it arose, above all, from the desire to enforce the justness and holiness of their cause, by displaying on the one hand their own forbearance, and on the other the infatuated tyranny of their rulers. To this may have been added those considerations to VOL. V.-B

which, when necessity or honour did not forbid it, prudence might fairly look-a country unprepared in every thing for war-a people already suffering from the measures which they had been forced to adopt-an enemy powerful in every resource, and ready for the conflict. On these considerations. they were opposed to a premature haste, which they thought could bring with it no advantages, that would not equally, exist when the measures they had already adopted should have failed, but might defeat them before they had been fairly tried.

The spirit of the times, however, was full of ardour, and the dictates of manly feeling were listened to, rather than the lessons of prudence. The resolutions were adopted, and a committee of twelve gentlemen appointed to carry them into effect. The constitution of this committee affords a noble instance of the disinterested patriotism which pervaded: the whole assembly; on it were placed most of the leading gentlemen who had opposed the resolutions, and among them Mr. Harrison. When the sense of the house was ascertained, all private views were discarded, and every one united, heart and hand, in promoting what had now become the approved policy of the province.

Before the convention adjourned, they adopted the measure, which perhaps was the most important in the posture of affairs, the election of delegates to the second general congress. Among these Mr. Harrison was again appointed. An effort had been made by lord Dunmore to prevent the measure. He had issued a proclamation in which he spoke of congress, as an assembly of certain persons styling themselves delegates, to obtain redress of certain pretended grievances; and, in his majesty's name, required all magistrates and officers to prevent any such appointment, and to exhort all the

citizens to desist from such an unjustifiable proceeding, so highly displeasing to his majesty. But the age of proclamations had passed by. The delegates were elected without hesitation.

Early in May, 1775, Mr. Harrison again repaired to Philadelphia, to take his seat in congress. During his residence in this city, he lived in a house which may yet be seen in the northern part of the town, with two of his colleagues from Virginia, general Washington and Peyton Randolph, the distinguished president of congress. There Mr. Randolph died in the autumn of the same year; and general Washington having taken the command of the army in Massachusetts, Mr. Harrison remained alone. Within a few past years, there were several old and respectable inhabitants of Philadelphia, and a few yet survive, who could recollect at the period of which we are speaking, the cheerfulness and vavacity of his manners, and the liberality of his disposition. In a confined mansion then on the outskirts of the town, though now far within its limits, he gave to his northern friends some idea of that generous hospitality which had long distinguished the more extensive establishments at Berkeley. He, indeed, exceeded, in some degree, the limits of prudence; and as in those days supplies of money from distant landed estates were uncertain, and procured with difficulty, he was several times induced to borrow it from his friend and associate in congress, Mr. Willing. This loan at one time amounted to a large sum, but was punctually repaid by Mr. Harrison before his death.

Congress had scarcely met, when the duties of the president, as speaker of the house of burgesses of Virginia, obliged him to relinquish his honourable post and return to that state. Mr. Hancock had just arrived in Philadelphia; he

brought with him all the fame, which ministerial oppression had conferred, in excluding him by name from the general pardon extended to the rebellious colonists; and he brought with him too, a better claim to distinction in the generosity of his character, and the perfect disinterestedness of his patriotism. The eye of congress was immediately fixed on him as the successor of Mr. Randolph, and he was unanimously elected president. With a modesty not unnatural at his years, and a consciousness of the difficulty he might experience, in filling a station of such high importance and responsibility, he hesitated to take the seat to which he had been elected. Mr. Harrison was standing beside him, and with the ready good humour that loved a joke even in the senate house, he seized the modest candidate in his athletic arms and placed him in the presidential chair, then, turning to some of the members around, he exclaimed, "we will show mother Britain how little we care for her, by making a Massachusetts man our president, whom she has excluded from pardon by a public proclamation."

On the twenty-fourth of June, we find Mr. Harrison a member of a committee, appointed to devise ways and means to put the militia in a proper state for the defence of America; a measure leading at once, to the general organization of an army throughout colonies. After deliberating on it for nearly a month, a plan was presented to, and with some alterations, adopted by congress, which formed the basis of the militia system throughout the war.

On the first of August congress adjourned, and on the eleventh of the same month, a convention was held at Richmond, when Mr. Harrison was elected a third time to congress. On the thirteenth of September, he took his seat. His name soon appears among the most prominent and ac