ach day from 8.30 in the morning to 1 o'clock P. M. The entire
afternoons were taken up with the important and exacting work of his
committee of final revision. Frequently it was far into the night before
he and his clerk had prepared their reports. General Toombs was in his
sixty-eighth year, but stood the ordeal well. His facility, his
endurance, his genius, his eloquence and pertinacity were revelations to
the younger men, who knew him mainly by tradition. General Toombs
proposed the only safe and proper course for the convention when he
arose in his place on the floor and declared; "All this convention has
to do is to establish a few fundamental principles and leave the other
matters to the legislature and the people, in order to meet the ever
varying affairs of human life." There was a persistent tendency to
legislate upon details, a tendency which could not be entirely kept
down. There was an element elected to this convention bent upon
retrenchment and reform, and these delegates forced a long debate upon
lowering the salaries of public officers, a policy which finally
prevailed. During the progress of this debate General Toombs arose
impatiently in his place and declared that, "The whole finances of the
State are not included when we are speaking of the Governor's salary,
and you spend more in talking about it than your children will have to
pay in forty years."

Occasionally he was betrayed into one of his erratic positions, as when
he moved to strike out the section against dueling, and also to expunge
from the bill of rights all restrictions upon bearing arms. He said:
"Let the people bear arms for their own protection, whether in their
boots or wherever they may choose."

But his treatment of public questions was full of sound sense and
discretion. He warned the convention that those members who, from
hostility to the State administration, wished to wipe out the terms of
the office-holders and make a new deal upon the adoption of the new
constitution, were making a rash mistake. They would array a new class
of enemies and imperil the passage of the new law. He advocated the
submission of all doubtful questions, like the homestead laws and the
location of the new Capitol, to the people in separate ordinances. He
urged in eloquent terms the enlargement of the Supreme Court from three
justices to five. Having been a champion of the law calling that Court
into being forty years before, he knew its needs and pro