Patrick Henry’s “Speech to the Virginia Convention” is full of highly effective rhetorical devices, including the following:
Alternation of long sentences and short sentences, so that the short sentences receive greater emphasis. A good example of this technique involves the first three sentences of the address. The initial sentence is long; the second sentence is even longer, but the third sentence is emphatically abrupt: “This is no time for ceremony.” Frequent use of metaphors, or implied comparisons. Thus, thinking is compared to seeing (“We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth”); experience is compared to a lamp (“I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided; and that is the lamp of experience”); and so on. Personification, as when he compares false hopes to the song of a siren. Allusions, as when he echoes the Bible (Mark 8:18) when he speaks of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not . . . .
