Page:Sketches of the life and character of Patrick Henry.djvu/77

 came so justly celebrated afterward. I had been inti- mate with him from the year 1759-60, and felt an inter- est in what concerned him; and I can never forget a particular exclamation of his in the debate, which electrified his hearers. It had been urged, that, from certain unhappy circumstances of the colony, men of substantial property had contracted debts, which, if ex- acted suddenly, must ruin them and their families, but with a litde indulgence of time, might be paid wiUi ease. ' What, sir," exclaimed Mr. Henry, in animadverting on this, ' is it proposed then, to reclaim the spendthrift from his dissipation and extravagance, by filling his poc- kets with money .^' These expressions are indelibly impressed on my memoiy. He laid open with so much energy the spirit of favouritism, on which the proposi- tion was founded, and the abuses to which it would lead, that it was crushed in its birth. He carried with him all the members of the upper counties, and left a mi- nority composed merely of the aristocracy of the countrj'. From this time his popularity swelled apace; and Mr. Robinson dying the year afterwards, his deficit was brought to light, and discovered die true object of the proposition.^'*

this motion was to be found on the journals of the day, and beg-ged my cor- respondent to explain it, which he does very satisfactorily in the following terms, " Abortive motions are not always entered on the journals, or rather they are rarely entered. It is the modern introduction of yeas and nays which has given the means of placing a rejected motion on the journals : and it is hkely that the speaker, who, as treasurer, v/as to be the loan officer, and had the direction of the journals, would choose to omit an entry of the mo- tion in this case. This accounts sufficiently for the absence of any trace of the motion on the journals. There was no suspicion then, (so far at least as I knew,) that Mr. Robinson had used the public money in private loans to his friends, and that the secret object of tliis scheme was to transfer those debtors to the pubUc, and thus clear his accounts. I have diligently exa- mined the names of the members on the journals of 1764, to see if any were stiU living, to whose jnemory we might recur on this subject ; but I find not
 * In reply to this communication, I stated my surprise that no evidence of

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