But his great effort in the assembly of 1816 was his speech on the
Convention bill of that year. He spoke in reply to the late Gen. Smythe
of Wythe; and in an argument of uncommon power, which formed one of the
eloquent traditions of the House when I took my seat in it twelve years
later, he answered the objections urged against the existing
constitution, and sustained that instrument in all its length and
breadth. His speech produced a wonderful effect upon all who heard it.
The late Philip Doddridge, one of the ablest and most decided of all Mr.
Tazewell's opponents in state and federal politics, but ever abounding
in that magnanimity which flourishes most in the finest minds, always
spoke of the argument of Mr. Tazewell in reply to Gen. Smythe as
extraordinary--as surpassing any that he ever heard in a deliberative
assembly. He told me so in conversation, and he afterwards spoke of it
in the same exalted strain in the House of Delegates and in the
Convention of 1829. The result of the Convention discussion was, that,
though a bill calling a Convention passed the House by a small majority,
it was lost in the Senate; and a compromise was effected between the
East and the West by reorganizing the basis of representation in the
Senate on white population according to the census of 1810.
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