action. If his clear vision led him away from his friends, he left them, but he left them with reluctance. Toombs, too, had his intellectual convictions, often admirably sane, and broad, and far-reaching ; but he had no re- luctance about following them anywhere.
To begin with, he hated the party system. " A nurs- ery of faction," ^ he called it. It was not recognized by the Constitution. Why should he recognize it ?
Acting on this principle, he fought friends as well as foes. If the common cry was war, this panoplied herald of good tidings could raise his trumpet voice for peace. Why should we fight England over a boundary ? He was for peace — for honorable peace. " It is the mother of all the hopes and virtues of mankind." ^ Why should we annex Texas and plunder Mexico ? Greed, greed, all greed. '* A people who go to war without just and suffi- cient cause, with no other motive than pride and the love of glory, are enemies to the human race and deserve the execration of all mankind. What, then, must be the judgment of a war for plunder?" ^^
With domestic matters there was the same strenuous ardor. Congress itself was not to be respected, if not re- spectable. He speaks of ** members of the two Houses of Congress who come here three months in one year and eight months in another — which is about three times too long in my judgment." Public improvements and public facilities which tended to abridge the rights of the indi- vidual — he would have none of them. The post-office
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