W.
Murdaugh, Richard Blow, and Francis S. Taylor.
[7] Tazewell Taylor, Esq.
[8] For his views of public duty see Appendix No. 4.
[9] This speech Mr. Tazewell was surprised to learn from the public
prints, was regarded as a great effort. In a letter dated the 3d of
February, 1825, a few days after the delivery of the speech, he writes
to a friend in Virginia as follows: "The newspapers and my Virginian
friends have done me irreparable mischief in the too lavish encomia they
have bestowed upon my speech, as you call it. Believe me, I was very
much in the situation of him who had been talking prose all his life
without knowing it. I had no conception that I had made a speech, and
really thought I had merely given a clear and distinct exposition of a
matter of public law as familiar to me as the doctrine of dower, and
concerning which I had no more doubt. And it was with infinite
astonishment I first saw the strong panegyric heaped upon my argument
here. So true is this, that on the evening after I had concluded it, I
wrote to my friend Wickham, telling him if his eye should see anything
of it through the newspapers, he would wonder how so much A B C
knowledge could be tolerated here, but that I saw it was necessary to
state it, and therefore he must not think me so much of a pedant as he
might otherwise be disposed to do.
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