Ashtabula weekly telegraph. [volume] (Ashtabula, Ohio) 1853-1873, 1861-06-08

with Thomas Jefferson should end with

with Thomas Jefferson should end with
John B. Floyd /. .-....... ....-....
II power, and Office, and political pres
tige, were the main elements Of greatness
in commonwealth, Virginia should have
remained to this day the foremost State in
the Union. That they are not, her decline
and fall attest. New York, which ranked
fifth in 1890, has now more than double
her population and treble her wealth; Ohio,
which had not a civilized inhabitant when
Great Britain acknowledged our indepen-
dence, is now far ahead Of her in every ele-
ment Of power Illinois, which dates back
barely forty years, has outstripped her in
the race to greatness. Massachusetts,, a
mere speck beside her, surpasses Virginia
to-day in wealth, in industry, in production,
in freemen, and is only outnumbered by her
through the process Of counting as men for
one purpose those whom she insists on re-
garding (and having us regard as chattels
for another. The state whereof Washing.
ton and Jefferson were proud remains where
they left it, its scenery as varied and ro'
mantle as ever, its area as magnificent, its
undeveloped resources as vast, its climate
as genial, its rivers as bounteous and bene-
icient ; but its glory has departed, its em-
pire has passed away.
What is the cause Of its decay ? Why
is it that, when every year sees new pilgrims
vending reverently to the Rock OF Ply
mouth, and proud hearts annually gathered
in almost every American city to do honor
to 'Forefathers' Day. no society ccmmemo-
rates the Landing at jamestown, and hard
ly footstep prints the grass which covers
the site OF that extinct village Why is it
that bOunieous Nature refuses to harvest to
the soil which was so fertile under Wash.
ingtou'S enlightened culture, and that ruin
ed houses and abandoned fields so thickly
greet the traveller from Washington to
Richmond
Carlyle, in his Letter on International
Copyright, suggests that Rob Roy's capital
mistake was supposition that he could ob-
tain his beef cheaper by marrying the Low.
lands for cattle than by buying them for
honest coin in the Grassmarket. A grave
mistake, doubtless-but is there, in essence
any other Z Is not every road to wealth
or comfort but that of honest industry
practically one with Rob Roy's
To one who luxuriales in lazness aud has
no idea that the moral government Of God
extends to every act and thought, the de-
vice of Human Slavery naturally seems
one Of the happiest and most convenient
which the wit of mau ever contrived. To
sit idly in the shade and watch another
plow and hoe in the fierce snnshine--digg-
ing aud striving not for his own profit but
for that of the well.pcased denizen Of the
ch hn Mt
nanny whose own child is foredoomed
by law to wait on his foster.b brother through
life, delving to support him in idleness aud
fairing coarsely to maintain him in luxury
what could be more agreeable than this,
if life had no moral purpose and the uni.
verse no God? Then might iniquity be as
profitable as it often seems convenient, and
Virginia still first among states---as pros,
porous and powerful as in the days of her
great departed.
A careful statistician computes that the
Mother Of States has, qoithia the last half
century, reoeired more for her ouon flesh and
blood than The fGH preseut vaEue of her citi.
sens property land and sLares included In
other words, all the products of her past
Industry have been eaten up by her people,
leaving only the proceeds of the annual
sales of her children as the net result
of her two hundred and fifty years ex.
istence as commonwealth. Instead
of fitting out her emigrating progeny,
like New England, with an education, and
q religion, and some humble share of this
worlds goods, she has taken them to the
auction block and sold them, putting the
proceeds coolly into her pocket, and pre-
paring to renew the process next year, or
SO fast at least, as her human stock
shall have become marketable. If the Fa-
ther of Lies were not the poorest sort of
paymaster, how rich she must have become
long ago
But be has served her as (in the long
run) be serves all his devotees, and 1861
finds her poor, declining, heavily in debt,
with an exhausted soil, an uneducated popu.
latiOn, disheartend industry, and a con.
stantly declining weight in the councils of
the Republic. ecession-Rebellion-
forcblc disruption of the ties that bind her
to the Union--an appeal from the sway of
constitutional majorities to the law of the
strongest-from Congresses and Supreme
Courts to the red right arm-such is the
desperate resort whereby Virginia seeks to
retrieve her bankrupt fortunes. May He
who is rich in mercy lead her by way she
has not known out from the land of dark
ness and bondage into the glorious light of
perfect liberty, overriding her suicidal mad.
ness to her utter delVerance from all
chronic oppression and injustice, causing
her waste places to break forth into singing,
and her wildernesses to blossom as the rosel