“Mr. Toombs. (Interrupting Mr. Stanton) called the gentleman to order. The committee ought not to tolerate this custom of speaking to matters not immediately before it.
The Chairman. Does the gentleman from Georgia raise the point of order that the remarks of the gentleman from Tennessee are not in order because they have no reference to the bill before the committee.
Mr. Toombs. My point is that debate upon steamboats is not in order upon a pension bill.
The Chairman. I decide the gentleman is in order. It has been invariable practice to permit such debate in committee of the whole on the state of the union.
Mr. Toombs. The practice may have been permitted; but it was wrong.”
On appeal by Toombs the chairman was reversed.
Though Toombs—a whig—had stubbornly opposed the candidacy of Howell Cobb—a democrat—he soon became to the latter, after his election as speaker, the leading parliamentary authority. Often there would be confused clamor and wild disorder, nearly every member proposing something. At a loss himself, Cobb would look at Toombs and see him intently conning his Jefferson. Soon he would rise, and being recognized by the speaker at once, would forthwith suggest the right thing.
The foregoing was often told by Cobb, as his friends have informed me.
February 24, 1853, he shows up the bad consequences of overpaid offices, the duties of which the holders can hire others to do for half of its compensation; and March 2, the same year, he thus speaks of a cognate evil:
“The gentleman seems to go upon the principle that as many clerks with high salaries should be attached to one office as to any other—the principle of equalizing the patronage of these different offices without regard to the species of labor required by each.”