ation.

At the session of November, 1766, Mr. John Robinson, who had for many
years held the offices of speaker and treasurer, being now dead, an
investigation of his accounts exposed an enormous defalcation. A motion
to separate the offices, brought forward by Richard Henry Lee, and
supported by Mr. Henry, proved successful. Edmund Pendleton was at the
head of the party that resisted it.[545:A]

Mr. Lee on this occasion pursued his course in opposition to the
confederacy of the great in place, the influence of family connections,
and that still more dangerous foe to public virtue, private friendship.
The contest appears to have been bitter, and it engendered animosities
which survived the lapse of years and the absorbing scenes of the
outbreaking Revolution.

A fragment of the speech delivered by Mr. Lee on this occasion has been
preserved.[545:B] After supporting his views by historical examples, he
remarks: "If, then, wise and good men in all ages have deemed it for the
security of liberty to divide places of power and profit; if this maxim
has not been departed from without either injury or destroying
freedom--as happened to Rome with her decemvirs and her dictator--why
should Virginia so early quit the paths of wisdom, and seal her own
ruin, as far as she can do it, by uniting in one person the only two
great places in the power of her assembly to bestow?" The fragment of
this speech ends just where Mr. Lee was about to combat the arguments in
support of the union of the two offices. Among these arguments were,
that innovation is dangerous; that the additional office of treasurer
was necessary to give the speaker that pre-eminence that is befitting
his station; that the parliamentary powers of the speaker give the chair
no influence, as in the exercise thereof in pleasing one he may offend a
dozen; that a separation of the offices might induce the government at
home to take the appointment out of their hands altogether; and that the
support of the dignity of the chair necessarily involved a great
expense.

It could not have been difficult to refute these arguments. The
combination of the offices of speaker and treasurer was itself an
innovation of as recent date as 1738. The speaker of the English house
of commons did not find the office of treasurer necessary to maintain
his dignity. If the office of speaker of itself gave no influence, why
had it been always sought for? Nor could the separation of the offices