The Sun.
London, England, 1868-07-23 00:00:00

THE VIRGINIA LEADERS OF THE
REVOLUTION.

The Round Table, in reviewing " Bancroft's His
tory of the United States," and " Rives' Life of Ma-
dison," discusses the Virginian Cavaliers. B nocrof r
denied that Virginia had been settl.ed by cav Tiers,
maintaining that the people had sprung mainly from
adventurers, who, unmoved by any chivalric feel-
ing, had in emigration sought their own interest,
strengthened by infusions of Scotch and Irish Presby-
terians, and many who preferred to leave England on
the return of Charles 11. ; while the valley of Vir-
ginia had a large German population. But he
acknowledges that in their origin there was a per-
ceptible, though never an exclusive, influence of the
cavaliers. The question had arisen whether the
spirit which prevailed in Virginia before the Revolu-
tion was derived from the cavaliers, and he answers
that it came from the heart of the people. This
Mr. Rives disputes ; no fact, he s Lys, is better
established than that the early English emi-
grants to Virginia were strong King an 1 Church
men, and down to the period of the Revo-
lution the mass of the emigration from England
to Virginia was of the cavalier strain. That
the country was settled for the most part by gentle-
men adventurers may be gathered from the lists.
Of the first hundred, 78 are classed in Captain
Smith's History, and of these, 54 are styled " gen-
tlemen," when the word signified a social position,
conveying a meaning it has now lost. He proceeds
to sketch the persons of influence at the period pre-
ceding the Revolution. The forefathers of many
who in it took a prominent part had fought and died
in defence of Charles Stuart. Washington's grand-
father was first cousin of Colonel Henry Washing-
ton, who led a forlorn hope for the king at the
taking of Bristol in 1613. Falkland, who fell on
the plains of Newbury, was an ancestor of the
Virginian patriot Archibald Cary. The Lees, the '
Blands, the Carters, the Digges, the Byrds, and
other foremost patriots of the day, were of well-
known cavalier descent. Washington, the cava-
lier, was the first to take up arms. Ma,on,
the cavalier, wrote the Bill of Rights of Vir-
ginia; Jefferson, the cavalier, was attainted
for treason ; Pendleton, the cavalier, was president
of the Committee of Safety ; Richard Henry Lee,
the cavalier, was the mouth-piece of revolution ;.
Patrick Henry, the descendant of cavaliers, was the
almost inspired orator sounding the charge ; Cary,
Randolph, Monroe, Marshall, Arthur Lee, all cava-
liers, were the brain and arm Of the revolution and
its real originators, to whom the masses looked,
and by whom they were led. What were the ob-
jects of these men'? The Rotor/ Table asserts that
a pure democracy was the last thing they desired,.
with the exception, perhaps, of Jefferson. Wash-
ington was a "full-blooded" aristocrat, and re-
ceived Congress, as President, standing in his great
reception room, full dressed and powdered, the im-
personation of authority. Mason lived on his great
estate a baron among his retainers; Pendleton,
when revising the laws of Virginia :n conjunction
with Jefferson, strove to retain an established
church, and the law of primog.miture, the
corner-stone of aristocracy. '1 hey desired to
redress grievances
—not to separate from the
great English stem. It was only when they
found it impossible to maintain this, and the
struggle became one of life an I death, that they
erected a Government without King or Nobility.
The Round Table then goes on as follows :—" But
let the reader guard himself from the mistake of
supposing that Washington and his associates in-
tended to found a' pure Democracy,' as credited ;
the absurd theory that all men are equal' origi-
nated with Mr. Jefferson. No human being ever
less believed in that idea than George Washington.
He was forced by circumstances to become the
head of a great movement, apparently against
the prerogative and privilege of king and noble,
but, in his own eyes, he was simply opposing
bad government in the House of Commons.
See the records for this statement of the sentiments
of the leaders in the Revolution. That the move-
ment would go further—not only secure equal re-
presentation, but erect a democracy---'Washington
probably never believed an I certainly di i not de-
sire. When the die was cast, Washington endea-
voured to make the best of things. His persistent
effort as President was to make the country a Repub-
lic instead of a Democracy. The Republic which the
great cavalier dreamed of was a representative go-
vernment, having for chief officer a Lord Protector
or President —a Parliament or Congress elect.;l by
the states or freeholders therein—and this was to
be a good, strong government without and within ;
his Excellency the Protector or Presidmt was
to hold the rogues in awe,' and make his
authority respected. There was not much r states-
rights' in that theory it is true, but there
was very little pure Democracy'—amid as
long as Washington lived the Government was
a Republic, was respected, and the ' pure
Democracy' idea could not get a foothold. When,
however, Mr. Jefferson—the apostle of sans-culot-
v courtesy
sans-culot-
tism and the rights of man'—came into power,
all things suddenly changed, What succeeded was
close-cropped hair, unpowdered ; shoes with leather
strings instead of buckles ; pantaloons instead of
equality, Demo-
scirlakeys7tothcke ildlgesad; insteadle of
veMr.' instead of
in Excellency ;'
brusquerie
a or
that new regime
l
in which everybody was equal to everybody else ;
and when to call a man a gentleman was to stig-
matize him as an aristocrat'—to point him out
as an object of public hostility, suspicion, and in-
sult. Mr.. Jefferson's states-rights views were ad-
mirable and unanswerable, but unfortunately they
have effected absolutely nothing. His social views
were moonstruck, and have inflicted enormous mis-
chief upon his country."

THE "NATION" ON THE CLOSE OF THE
FISCAL YEAR.

The Nation has taken a curious way of account-
ing for the decrease in the revenue and the cessa-
tion during the past year of the debt paying pro-
gress. There is, it says, " only one way to account
for the falling off of our national income, and that
is, startling as the statement may appear, our
steadily increasing poverty. The people of the
United States are, and have been, for several years
past steadily decreasing in wealth. It is to this
cause and to no other that we must attribute the
falling off in our surplus revenue during the last
year. In comparison with the census of 1860 recent
reports of the Agricultural Bureau at Washington
show that, whereas the people of the Unitel States
have largely increased in numbers, the milch cows
have decreased to the extent of fully five per cent. ;
that, where before the war, enough calves were every
year allowed to grow up to furnish an addition
to the existing number of milch cows, during
the war and since, not enough have been allowed
to grow up even to replace the number of cows
annually dying, much less to keep up the increase re-
quired by the growing wants of a growing popula-
tion. Is it to be wondered that milk and butter
and meat are high ? Is it necessary to attribute to
paper money some miraculous influence in raising
prices, when we see that in this instance, at least,
the rise in prices is due to a very different cause ?
Is the nation poorer or not in the matter of milch
cows ? The farmer who values his cow at one hun-
dred dollars may think himself richer than when
his cow was worth fifty dollars only, but the nation
that has four hundred thousand less milch cows to
feed four millions more people can scarcely be
thought to have increased its wealth." Nor is it
live stock only that has diminished. Corn is short,
and even cotton, it is stated, must be imported from
Europe. The country is drained of gold to pay the
rapid consumption of foreign merchandise ; and
without providing for the deficit, manufactures have
been relieved of taxes to the extent of, $30,000,000.
" The fact cannot be disguised that the posi-
tion is serious, while the country i 3 infatuated
with the contrary belief, or wrapped in ignorant
selfishness." This article has attracted a good deal of
attention in England, as the Nation is becoming a
high authority on American matters on this side
/be Atlantic. The object of the writer is evidently
to stir up Congress and the leading financiers at
Washington. We do not suppose that the Nation
yet despairs of the Republic ! knowing, as it does,
the unequalled weals," resources of the country. It