private debts to
British merchants. The speaker, whom Jefferson called "an excellent
man, liberal, friendly, and rich", had anticipated improvement in the
economic climate would bring the money in. Meanwhile he could always
rely on his own great private fortune. He failed to count on the
continued economic depression, the passage of the Currency Act, or the
living standards of his debtors. Something had to be done and quickly.

While the tobacco revision was working its way through committees, the
speaker and his debtor-burgess friends devised a public loan office
plan to take up the debts, provide an alternative source for funds, and
relieve Robinson of his burden. Such a plan would have raised the ire
of Richard Henry Lee, but the burgess from Westmoreland was sitting out
this supposedly "short, uneventful meeting." He had made a monumental
error in political judgment, having applied to the crown to be the
Stamp Act agent in Virginia. Robinson knew this and quietly warned Lee
that he should stay home. Robinson did not anticipate the unlikely duo
which would bring down the public loan office. Leading the opposition
in the House was Patrick Henry, first-term burgess from Louisa County.
Directing his attack against favoritism and special interest
legislation, Henry, who had developed a thriving legal trade
representing creditors against debtors, knew whereof he spoke when he
exclaimed, "What, sir, is it proposed then to reclaim the spendthrift
from his dissipation and extravagance, by filling his pockets with
money?" Robinson had the votes and carried the house, but lost in the
council whose members disliked all public finance schemes. Chief
opponent was Richard Corbin, wealthy, receiver-general of royal
revenues and later Tory. In words nearly identical to Henry's, Corbin
noted, "To Tax People that are not in Debt to lend to those that are is
highly unjust, it is in Fact to tax the honest, frugal, industrious
Man, in order to encourage the idle, the profligate, the Extravagant,
and the Gamester". Council defeated the loan plan. With the tobacco
laws revised and the loan scheme defeated and only routine legislation
in committee, most burgesses left town.

Exactly when or why Patrick Henry, George Johnston of Fairfax, and John
Fleming of Cumberland decided to offer the Stamp Act Resolves is lost
in obscurity. Our sources are principally Thomas Jefferson, then a
college student at William and Mary, Paul Carrington, a pro