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title:“Richard Henry Lee to Patrick Henry”
authors:Richard Henry Lee
date written:1789-9-27
permanent link
to this version:		https://consource.org/document/richard-henry-lee-to-patrick-henry-1789-9-27/20130122080939/
last updated:Jan. 22, 2013, 8:09 a.m. UTC
retrieved:Dec. 9, 2023, 2:09 a.m. UTC
transcription
citation:
Lee, Richard Henry. "Letter to Patrick Henry." Creating the Bill of Rights. Ed. Kenneth R. Bowling and Helen E. Veit. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. 298-99. Print.
manuscript
source:		 Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress

Richard Henry Lee to Patrick Henry (September 27, 1789)

My third letter to you on the 14th. inst. will satisfy you how little is to be expected from Congress that shall be any ways satisfactory on the subject of Amendments. Your observation is perfectly just, that right without power to protect it, is of little avail. Yet small as it is, how wonderfully scrupulous have they been in stating Rights? The english language has been carefully culled to find words feeble in their Nature or doubtful in their meaning!1 . . . By an Address, received two days ago from the Assembly of R. Island, copy of which I will sent you by my brother, to the federal government, it appears to me as if they intended to keep out of this Union until effectual Amendments were made—We ought in common prudence to have done the same—Does N. C. design to act in the same manner.2

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