The Daily state journal. [volume] (Alexandria, Va.) 1868-1874, 1873-02-10
MONDAY EvEN'G. FEB'RY 10, 1877
Aristidos is Our Statesman.

MS all other commendation than that which
it simply withholds. To be considered
adroit and able in political leadership is
not our ambition /; but to fearlessly adj
vocate the right when we know distinctively
what it is, and that earnestly and without
regard to favor or personal considerations,
is no mean ambition to fire the humblest
breast. We have said that the action taken
by the Federal government to crush out
rebellion in Virginia was carried so far
beyond its legitimate exercise in the prem
Uses, that it not only crushed out rebellion
but the life of the State along with 1t; and
that, consequently, the debts of the old
State of Virginia devolved in payment
upon the Federal government, and did not
fall as a legacy upon the second of the new
states carved out Of the territory of the
old. This position we have taken not with
a view of forcing it as an issue upon the
Republican party of Virginia, but simply
as indicating q conviction thoroughly
grounded in our own mind, and which
must ultimately make its way to recogni-
ton and general approvaliu the public mind,
us well.
Some Of our people have q sort of hard
headed mulishness that will not admit of
their separating state and national politics,
or of looking at any question except from
a purely partisan standpoint. They mis-
take mere logged obstinacy in politics for
a sublime ard heroic firmness which they
do not possess; and these will never admit
that they, or the party to which they be-
long, were ever anything else than infalli-
BILE in their judgments, or absolutely right
in the lines of policy mapped out by them.
With this class of minds it is always idle
TO waste words in argument. Stuck in
the mire of self-conceit, they can never be
dragged out of it. Their error consists in
mistaking triaes for essentials IAN ~invaria-
BILE characteristic OF narrow minds) and
in adhering to them to the detriment of all
essential truth and justice. They should
remember that the horse is more tractable
than the mule the mule decidedly more
so than the ass, and the ass the iinpersona-
ton of all obstinacy and m%ulishness in
themselves.
The Federal government crushed out re-
bellion in Virginia. That was right. The
constitution conferred upon it the power t
do it, and that power it exercised. Not t.
have exercised it under the circumstances
would have been an exhibition of pusll
lanimity which would have damned it GU
of existence. But in crushing out rebellion
in the State, it also crushed out the life o.
the State. This it had no constitutions
warrant to do except as the last and mos
desperate extremity of war. Such an ex
tremity at no time existed and ~certainl,
was not a continuing ertrematy after the aa
closed. But having wrested West vir
GINA from the rebellious grasp of the Con
federacy mot the State), it was driven b,
the logical necessity, of an illogical act t.
strangle the whole sovereignty of Virginia
of which it had already strangled o part
Had it pursued the policy indicated by MI
Lincoln for the recognition ofloyalty in tn
Confederate States, and recognized West
ern Virginia and the few counties it ha
snatched from the Confederate grasp thi
side the mountains, as the State of W
giiniia proper, without any attempt to pal
tition up its sovereignty, then there Nigh
have been no break in the continuity of il
existence, and the Virginia of to-day migf
be considered the SANE as that of 1855
with the debts of the old state resting
legal and equitable obligation upon th
new.
But the law of continuity in respect
the life of q state is this: that it mu'
pass as a jurally organized body throue
all the intermediate stages of its existenc
from where it first begins to where it final
ends. In other words, nothing can pa
from one stage Of existence to anoth
without passing through all its informed
ate stages. A break in the continuity of
state is the end Of its life as a juIal
organized body. The trunk Of a tree
not the tree itself, any more than t
the branches which may be violent
wrenched frem it. 1t is idle, then, to 50
that the Virginia Of to-day is the same
that of1s61, which was conquered. strip
of its rights of sovereignty, political
wiped out as an organized body, a
polandized or partitioned up into two n
states, neither Of which can be consider
any part of the old state. For a state
organized life in a political body viii
exercises Jural relations, OF the relatio
Of right as between individuals in the st
as we'll as between the state and the in
yiduals comprising the body polite.
stroy his organized life and you destl
the state. This proposition is axioma
and needs no argument to extend its TO
as a truism.
Montesquieu recites four ways in VIII
a conquered state may be treated BY
conqueror either by continuing to rul
according to the laws, fundamental
otherwise, existing at the time the stat
conquered, in which case the conqueror
.-a - b;rnoaIf npIu the exercise of