Bristol News

BOB TOOMBS SPEAKS.

Last Thursday night Bob Toombs made one of his characteristic speeches at Atlanta. We find it reported at length in the Constitution, from which we give full extracts below, as its red-hot style and sentiments will make it a subject of national interest and comment:

Hon. Robert Toombs responded to calls in one of his characteristic efforts.

FELLOW-CITIZENS:—I am not in this programme. (Laughter.) I came here as a listener. I have not made a speech in public since 1865. I have been watching events though. I am an outlaw. I am proud of my outlawry, (Laughter.) and I thank the living God that I have lived to see just such a state of things, because we shall be able to sift the chaff from the wheat—we can find out all the true Democrats, chalk their backs and kick the others out! (Laughter) I stand upon the principles of public liberty which has been advocated for eight centuries by my ancestors—principles as good to-day as in 1837. I stand by free governments and the right of freemen to govern themselves.

You talk to me about your Grants and Mr. Greeleys, and all such stuff I will beat them at the ballot-box, or any other sort of box you choose. (Applause and laughter.)

Now this is a very plain question—there is no trouble about it. Show me a man that tried to make a party out of the negroes, and I will show you a Greeley man. Show me a Bullock man that has turned Democrat, and I will show you a Greeley man—a thief that has robbed the State, and I will show you a Greeley man. Show me one of the Mitchell orphans, and I will show you a Greeley man. Show me a State road lessee, and I will show you a Greeley man ; but show me an honest man and I will show you an anti-Greeley man.

Why, we have no question with us There is not a white Greeley man in the county of Wilkes, the old hornet's nest of revolution.

I am glad we have got them all together. We will get all the New Democrats, the Bullock men, the swindlers, the thieves, in one pile and then get rid of them.

As to Greeley and Grant, with one exception, I would support old John Brown's Ghost, if I could maintain Democratic principles and popular rights. I would support the devil in preference to either of them, because when you support the devil you support a very respectable antagonist.—He is not a coward. He fought God Almighty a very respectable fight, and he fights him a pretty tough fight till now—so the story goes in Revelation.

As to me I put my politics upon one section of Magna Charta. No man shall be imprisoned, found guilty or exiled unless by the decision of a judge, and the verdict of a jury according to the laws of the land. The laws that He makes, and I will accept laws from no other. So far as the Government of the United States is concerned I am its enemy. I have trod under foot the flaunting lie a hundred times, and I trust to do it again. They are no friends of mine or of my country—They are no friends of liberty.

What's the difference between these people? Grant's a soldier, a sort of fool, but he loves his friends, sticks to his kin. [Laughter.] But Greeley loves nobody—don't even love his wife and is a woman's rights man.—He is a woman's rights man and I wouldn't vote for him for that, if for no other reason. "That's the matter with Hannah." If the woman only had the right kind of husbands there would be no woman's rights women [Laughter and Applause] They say a great deal about his old white hat, it is his greatest distinction.

Now, fellow-citizen, I don't know where this is going to ; with all reverence I say it—I leave it with God. I know my duty: to do justly, to maintain free government, to maintain public institutions, to fight all cowards and traitors, to stand on this grand old ship of the Constitution, and fight under the principles of eight centuries. It's true, pirates aboard in the Grants; rogues are boring her bottom in the Greeleys. Cast one into the sea; hang the other; do your duty; trust to God. What then? Let the storm come: let the robbers have charge; let the borers succeed; nail to the mast the holy flag, and give her to the God of the winds, the lightning and the gale. [Vociferous applause.]