Sentinel of the valley. [volume] (Woodstock, Va) 1841-1848, 1844-12-12

nothihg 1orstHl highef and better results,
but the encouraging and unfolding
hand of the State. Had it been thus
encouraged and upheld at an early day,
and the locked-up resources of this dis
trict thrown open by highways to pro-
fitable settlement and trade, there can
be no doubt, upon the facts presented,
but that its numbers and property, and
/ contributions to the treasury, would all
Of them have been intellectually greater
than they are now. This support it is
still practicable to give. 1t is still
practicable to make this district as pow
erful in fact as it is powerful in capaci-
ties; to make it, what it has evrey ply
steal faculty to become, the strongest
and wealthiest portion of the Common
wealth, and so to make it eventually,
the strongest and wealthiest contributor
also to every financial or other want
which the Commonwealth may feel.
If the contrary policy, however, is to
be pursued, and this country is to be
committed for its further development
and prosperity, to its own internal
means, upon the idea that they and
they alone are enough for that end, it is
as easy as it is painful to see the re-
suits that must follow.
Let the present condition ofthe Wes-
tern States, and the effect of it upon
the future growth of this very part of
our own, be considered, and it will be
difficult not to see that the policy which
will leave that growth to maintain and
invigorate itself, cannot be adopted
without imminent risk of positive and
! irrevocable mischief. For many years,
5. during which this frontier part of the
State was growing up to what it now
is, the vast country which lies beyond
it to the West, was more repulsive,
ard wilder frontier than itself, having
no advantages of habitation, or of pro-
mise greater than its own. And long
since, these forbidding features of it
have beer lost in the beautiful trans
formation which it now wears, down
even to our own day, there was not a
canal, nor railway, nor steamboat
in all that magnificent region; so that
a citizen of Virginia, when standing e.
ven upon its great highways of water,
and looking up the Ohio, or down the
Mississippi for an avenue for trade with
]; the world, was no better off than when
looking for it amongst the pathways
of his mountains. This is not so now.
Steam, with all its powers and appen-
dages, is there, marking everything
with the trace ofrevolution. The will
! derness is gone. The frontier, which
was ruggeder than our own, has given
way to populous and powerful commu-
mites, which are rich in everything
that commerce and soil and schools,
that civilization and Nature can sup
ply, and are properly regarded on that
account as amongst the choicest places
f in the Union for residence and home.
These communities, thus powerful
(, in every internal advantage which car
operate as bounty to emigration, are
, now our rivals, and will contend with
, US, and will contend successfully too
for the population Of our obstructec
district, unless we apply ourselves to
immediate and effective counteractlon
We must resist or must suffer. JUS
say to the inhabitants of that country,
standing in the very presence of these
States, and looking upon the buoyan-
Fl cy and health of their young and virgin
prosperity, that nothing is to be done
for them; that, much as we deplore the
existence of that mountain barrier thai
separates them from all profitable con
: nexion with the Atlantic cities, not {
dollar can be spared to remove it: JUS
say this, and let them be commended
, to the patient and self-denying virtues
: which are best suited to state such as
theirs, of privation and struggle-ane
, no one can doubt, but masses of then
will resort to immediate emigration as
the only sure remedy that is left them
And emigration, in this case, does no
deter or affiict as when it involves the
abandonment of ones country. 1t Is
but the change Of one spot of Amerl-
can soil for another, FORGETTING to the
emigrant not particle of his politica
f rights, and assuring him, at last, OF
/ a welcome incorporation with commu-
mites of people, whose government, IN
situations and laws are all of them kin
dred with those of the place of his ma
tivity. Under these circumstances,
f whilst there are some with whom the
sentiment of veneration for the place
oftheir birth has never lost any portion
! of its almost mysterious power, by con-
fict with their interest, and who cannot,