What parallelism did Patrick Henry use in his speech Give you liberty or give you death?

Answer 1

In this speech, Henry uses many examples of parallelism to effectively prove his point. One example is,"I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the house." Basically, parellism is the repeated use of a grammatical structure. They are normally very easy to pick out.

Answer 2

Patrick Henry was speaking to his fellow Virginians when he gave this speech. You see, Henry was an elected official to the Legislature of Virginia.

In those days, they were colonies so it was a colonial legislature. The King of England along with the Royal Governor, refused to acknowledge these meetings so they were essentially illegal, but nevertheless it was a meeting of the representatives of various parts of Virginia.

So he was giving a good speech about the principles he believed in. The Legislature in those days was known as the House of Burgesses. He gave it in the Virginia Capital, although not understandably in any government building of any kind since it was an illegal meeting.