The Daily state journal. [volume] (Alexandria, Va.) 1868-1874, 1872-03-18

BUT the war is over, and slavery has
been abolished. What, then, is left for the
platform for the young, and bright, and
generous West to stand upon, with the un-
feeling, eXacting, bigoted Puritan Moth
ing. As soon as the fog and poisonous
miasm with which the cunning politicians
have filled the atmosphere have cleared
away the liberal and fair-minded in all
parts Of this Union will tear themselves
away from fanatcsm and hypocrisy
Dispatch.
In the Dispatch's article of this morning,
headed "The New Dispensation,n there is
much that we can approve, and not little
that we should condemn. But, granting
all that our contemporary says about the
bigored Puritan clement of the country, is
there not little beam that we should cast
out of our own sectional eyes before we
make any more serious ado about the pro-
digious mote that is in our neighbours OPP
tics? Has the South no sectional preju-
dices-no poisonous miasma with which
cunning politicians have filled the atmos-
phere"-to get rid of? Are our skirts en-
tirely clear of bigotry, and unfeeling, ex-
acting prejudice? Do we live in such resi-
dences of porphyry, or pure crystals Of
feldspar, that we can afford to throw stones
at the more vitreous abodes of our neigh
bors? Have we no lanaticism and hypoc-
racy from which they would be justified in
tearing themselves away from us, as well
as we from them!
The philosophy of the Garden was not
so perfect a system of truth and morals
that the followers Of Epicurus could afford
to denounce the philosophy of the Porch as
an inferior system, although Zeno and the
stoics were altogether more ascetic than the
disciples of the more luxurious and refined
tastes of the Garden. We can condemn
many things in both those systems of phi
losophy, because we have passed beyond
the prejudlces Of both the Porch and the
Garden; and so we can pronounce judg-
ment upon the Puritanical element, which
is nowhere passing away so rapidly as in
some parts of New England, while
we do not lose sight of the pre-
JUDGES that drove the Puritans from
the mother country, and followed them
here in the breasts Of Virginia settlers, to
live long after there was any just ground
for keeping them alive. With the Revolu-
ton those prejudices should have died.
But we all know the peculiarly incestuous
| quality of prejudice by which constant
birth is being given to hated brood of
passions in the breasts of those who harbor
the unchaste sentiment, or feed on preiu-
dice as they would on the tongues of toads
and adders. The spirit of the Revolution
inspired nobler sentiment in the breasts of
Virginians, and they forgot all the errors
of the "Roundheads" in the common cause
which actuated both them and the "Cava-
liers" in the achievement of higher and
nobler destiny for both.
Let us nurse no more hates--feed on no
more adder's tongues-look no further after
the faults Of our neIghbors-unpack our
hearts with no more rancorous words-but
swing our shallops into the current of pro,
gressiye events, and strive for the mastery
in the coming race for material wealth and
grandeur, as well as intellectual strength
| and power, in the Republic. The race is
open to all, and let the truly noble and
! valiant win.