individuals," and by which, as was expected,
the debts due to Robinson on the loans which he had been granting
might be "transferred to the public, and his deficit thus completely
covered."[61] Accordingly, the scheme was brought forward under nearly
every possible advantage of influential support. It was presented to
the House and to the public as a measure eminently wise and
beneficial. It was supported in the House by many powerful and
honorable members who had not the remotest suspicion of the corrupt
purpose lying at the bottom of it. Apparently it was on the point of
adoption when, from among the members belonging to the upper counties,
there arose this raw youth, who had only just taken his seat, and who,
without any information respecting the secret intent of the measure,
and equally without any disposition to let the older and statelier
members do his thinking for him, simply attacked it, as a scheme to be
condemned on general principles. From the door of the lobby that day
there stood peering into the Assembly Thomas Jefferson, then a law
student at Williamsburg, who thus had the good luck to witness the
debut of his old comrade. "He laid open with so much energy the spirit
of favoritism on which the proposition was founded, and the abuses to
which it would lead, that it was crushed in its birth."[62] He
"attacked the scheme ... in that style of bold, grand, and
overwhelming eloquence for which he became so justly celebrated
afterwards. He carried with him all the members of the upper
counties, and left a minority composed merely of the aristocracy of
the country. From this time his popularity swelled apace; and Robinson
dying four years after, his deficit was brought to light, and
discovered the true object of the proposition."[63]

But a subject far greater than John Robinson's project for a loan
office was then beginning to weigh on men's minds. Already were
visible far off on the edge of the sky, the first filmy threads of a
storm-cloud that was to grow big and angry as the years went by, and
was to accompany a political tempest under which the British Empire
would be torn asunder, and the whole structure of American colonial
society wrenched from its foundations. Just one year before the time
now reached, news had been received in Virginia that the British
ministry had announced in parliament their purpose to introduce, at
the next session, an act for laying certain stamp duties on the
American colonies.