214 CONFEDERATE PORTRAITS
ruption, its treachery to the Caucasian race, its patron- age of vice, of fraud, of crime and criminals." ^^ What hearty wealth of honest egotism rings in his cry of dis- gust at the things that were going on about him : " I am sorry I have got so much sense. I see into the tricks of these public men too quickly. When God Almighty moves me from the earth, he will take away a heap of experience. I expect when a man gets to be seventy he ought to go, for he knows too much for other people's convenience." ^^ But the best thing in the later corre- spondence, as illustrating the value of a man's comment on his own character, is the following [italics mine] : '* I had hoped to be there myself, but the arbitration in the Whitfield case is protracted by Hill and his villains with the hope of annoying me out, but you know I generally take a through ticket. The thing is tmbearable except by a man of my philosophy T ^^
In this last phase, again, as so frequently before, we should note the makeweight of sound common sense and real constructive intelligence. No one's brain was more helpful than Toombs's in framing the new constitution of Georgia. And in opposing things in general, he op- posed some particular things for which wise men can never commend him too much. He opposed the popular election of judges, and when told that it worked well where it had been tried, answered, with the classical col- loquialism he loved to use : " It is easy to take the road to hell, but few people ever return from it." ^^ He op-
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