ld be to violate some
of the most sacred principles of the social compact. All free
governments, deriving their just powers from, and being established for
the benefit of, the governed, must necessarily have power over the
property, and consequently the credit, of the governed to the extent of
public use, and no further. And whenever government assumed the right to
use the property or credit of the people for any other purpose, it
abused a power essential for the perfection of its legislative duties in
a manner destructive of the rights and interests of the governed, and
ought to be sternly resisted by the people. The proposed measures, he
contended, violated these admitted truths, asserted the untenable
principle that governments should protect a portion of the people, in
violation of the rights of the remainder, from the calamities consequent
on unpropitious seasons and private misfortunes.

He must have been an indifferent or careless spectator of similar
financial schemes, Mr. Toombs declared, who could persuade himself that
this plan of borrowing money, to lend again at the same rate of
interest, could be performed without loss to the State. That loss must
be supplied by taxation, and to that extent, at least, it will operate
so as to legislate money from the pocket of one citizen to that of
another. The committee declared that it knew of no mode of legislative
relief except the interposition of unconstitutional, unwise, unjust, and
oppressive legislation between debtor and creditor, which did not need
their condemnation.

The argument was exhaustive and convincing. Never were the powers of the
State or the soundness of public credit more strongly set forth. The
whole scheme of relief was abandoned, and the General Assembly
adjourned.

The relief measures, however, had a great effect upon the campaign.
Rejected in the legislature under the rattling fire and withering
sarcasm of Toombs, they were artfully used on the hustings. "McDonald
and Relief" was the slogan. Men talked airily about "deliverance and
liberty." Mr. Toombs declared that "humbuggery was reduced to an exact
science and demonstrated by figures." The Act compelling the banks to
make cash payments was represented as an unwise contraction of the
currency and a great oppression to the people. Governor McDonald was
consequently reelected over William C. Dawson, the Whig nominee.

Robert Toombs was not a candidate for reelection in 1841. He worked hard