The old royalist has courage. He tears open his silken
vest and fine shirt and faces the young man who, though trained in the law
of the realm, is now filling that law with a hundred wounds. He raises a
passionate voice. "Here! Shoot me! 'Fore God, a fair mark -- a fair mark!
Shoot!"
Bacon will not shoot him, but will have that promised commission to go
against the Indians. Those behind him lift and shake their guns. "We will
have it! We will have it!" Governor and Council retire to consider the
demand. If Berkeley is passionate and at times violent, so is Bacon in his
own way, for an eye-witness has to say that "he displayed outrageous
postures of his head, arms, body and legs, often tossing his hand from his
sword to his hat," and that outside the door he had cried: "Damn my blood!
I'll kill Governor, Council, Assembly and all, and then I'll sheathe my
sword in my own heart's blood!" He is no dour, determined, unwordy
revolutionist like the Scotch Drummond, nor still and subtle like "the
thoughtful Mr. Lawrence." He is young and hot, a man of oratory and outward
acts. Yet is he a patriot and intelligent upon broad public needs. When
presently he makes a speech to the excited Assembly, it has for
subject-matter "preserving our lives from the Indians, inspecting the
public revenues, the exorbitant taxes, and redressing the grievances and
calamities of that deplorable country." It has quite the ring of young
men's speeches in British colonies a century later!
The Governor and his party gave in perforce.
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