Confiscation.
Fairfax county, the neighborhood of Gen. Beauregard's operations, is infested with an unfriendly population, consisting of small Northern farmers, who have been permitted to buy property and live there in peaceful times, and who now requite the hospitality of Virginia by acting as spies upon the movements of the Confederates, or openly taking up arms in the service of the enemy. Under the law of nations, all property of an enemy is subject to confiscation, and there could be no more proper occasion for the operation of such a law than that presented by the Northern spies and traitors, who hold real and other estate in Virginia.
