Page:Sketches of the life and character of Patrick Henry.djvu/92

 68 SKETCHES OF THE

��SECTION III.

At the opening of the next session^ the speaker an- nounced the repeal of the stamp act; and the house of burgesses^ in a paroxysm of feeUng, voted a statue to the king, and an obehsk to the British patriots by whose exertions the repeal had been effected. But before these monuments of national gratitude could be executed^ the effervescence subsided; and on the 9th of December, 1766, the bill which had been prepared for that purpose, was postponed to the first day of the next session; after which, we hear of it no more.

At the session of 1766, a question of great interest in those days, and one of real importance to the colony, came on to be discussed in the house of burgesses. Mr. Robinson, who had so long held the joint offices of speaker and treasurer, was now dead. The general fact of his delinquency as treasurer, was understood, although the sum was not yet ascertained: and that de- linquency, whatever it might be, was alleged to have arisen principally, from loans made to members of the house of burgesses. As the speaker, although elected in the first instance by the house, could not act until approved by the governor, and when so approved, was in office for seven years, re-eligible indefinitely — and as in the recent instance of Mr. Robinson, it had been dis- covered that an office so held, was too apt to generate a devotion to the purposes of the British court — it was considered by the patriots in the house, as a measure of sound policy, to take out of the hands of the speaker so formidable an engine of corruption and power, as the

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