The Sun.
London, England, 1862-12-12 00:00:00

A. GLIMPSE OF •VISGINIA.

(From the d let° York Tribune)
Falmouth, opposite Fredericksburg, Vft, Nov. 21.
The further we get into Virginia the more am I
struck by the utter desolation of the country and
the evident poverty of its inhabitants. One must—
if from " Yankee" land—see the degradation of the
inhabitants to comprehend it. Used to smiling and
productive farms, cultivated with all the aids and
appliances of modern agriculture; to thriving vil-
lages, where the mechanic arts flourish and give
wealth and ease to the citizens; to the welcome
church-spires that stand on every hill and in each
valley, the neatly painted school-houses at every
" four corners," this utter want of all the evidences
of civilisation is most striking and depressing.

Here are no well-cultivated farms ; 500 acres
barely support a small family of the better class
of whites. No schoolhouses at the corners for
education would elevate a class to whom the habits
and customs of the aristocracy forbid the opportu-
nities for improvement; none of the mechanical or
elegant arts for the households of the F.F.Vs. pur-
chase, with bigotted blindness, all their elevating
necessaries and enjoyments from the despised
"mudsills" of the North.

Slave-breeding supplies (or has supplied) the
purses of the upper classes, while their farms, de-
teriorating from year to year, have barely yielded
them the commonest " hog and hominy " required
for the home diet of the section. All books, all music,
all wines, all luxuries of every sort, have been the
product of a trade in souls—too frequently of a trade
in the offspring of the trader. Now that all this is
cut off; even the wealthier citizens, the aristocracy'
of the land, must revert to the original " hog and
hominy" of the country, and leave luxuries to some
dim, elysian future.
I have often wondered how the white trash live.
They do not work unless the planting of a little corn,
the grazing of a horse, or mule, and cow, and the
raising of a few hogs and poultry—who run nearly
wild—may be called work. Still they live, and
they raise many tow-headed children, who perpe-
tuate the unwholesome stock. I have often, I say,
wondered how they live. 1 have ascertained.
These poor whites—ignored by the aristocracy
and despised by the blacks—exist on whisky. In
this wise—Scraping together a few dollars (8 or 10
was sufficient in time of peace) they purchase a
barrel or two of cheap whisky. The negroes—al-
ways fond of liquor, and never honestly getting any,
except during the holidays—steal from their masters
corn, wheat, and chickens. These things they trade
with the poor whites for drink. They will give two
or three bushels of corn or wheat, a hog, half a
dozen chickens, for a pint of poor liquor ; and in this
way the degraded white men that infest this coup•
try exist.

It is a terrible style of life ; the natural result of
slavery. With paid labour, and any sort of encou-
ragement to others than landed proprietors, these
men might be small farmers, mechanics, labourers
of all sorts; honest men. Then Virginians would
be independent of other peoples for their luxuries
and refinements. But slavery blights all the land,
prevents competition in trade, mechanics, or agri-
culture, and puts a veto on improvement of every
description.
They cling to the patriarchal institution as they
cling to all other exploded and useless ideas. And
while slavery continues to blight the land, even the
return of peace will fail to place Virginia where
she might be. Once the proudest of States, ber
clinging to a barbarous and wicked institution has
brought her so low that nothing can now save her
except an utter revolution in her economy, her in-
stitutions, her manners and customs. She needs the
infusion of hardy Northern blood. She must be,
" Yankeeised," and please God she will be. Is there
not land enough lying idle here that shall give
farms and pleasant homes to an immigration equal
to the whole of this great army of the Potomac ?
When the day comes that witnesses the end of
slavery in Virginia, we shall see the opening of a
new and vigorous life, for which her greatessetoepnet,.
the natural fertility of her soil, her varied surta.ce
and facilities for improvement, give ample
Till then she is indeed a desolate and ruined com-
monwealth. God grant we may live to rejoice over'
her regeneration.