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The partitioning of Virginia.

--When the Emperor Leopold was on a visit to his Italian dominions, in the year 1791, he had an interview with Lord Elgin, envoy from the younger Pitt, at that time Premier of Great Britain, and M. Bischofswerder, envoy of the King of Prussia, the object of which was to concert a plan for the dismemberment of France, then agitated by the throes of that mighty Revolution which threw down all the old landmarks of nations, and shook Europe from its centre to its circumference, as though it had been smitten by an earthquake. In conformity with the views expressed at that interview, it was asserted at the time, and was no doubt true, that the Emperor of Germany and the King of Prussia, at an interview held at Pilnitz a few months after, (July, 1792,) actually signed a treaty to the effect indicated. In pursuance of this treaty, the Duke of Brunswick and the King of Prussia entered France with an army of 110,000 men within less than a mouth after; and the former, disguising his real object under the pretence of interfering in favor of Louis XVI., issued his famous proclamation, in which he threatened to put every Frenchman who took up arms in defence of the soil on which he was born to an ignominious death, if taken. In a few months after, the head of the King in whose cause this crusade was professedly undertaken was rolling in the saw-dust of the Place de la Concorde, the army which had been relied on to enforce the bloody threat was flying before the young recruits of France, after having lost one-half of its force; the King who had headed the expedition was a suppliant for mercy at the hands of those he had threatened to exterminate; and the Duke of Brunswick was on his way to his own dominions, baffled, defeated, dispirited, humbled stripped of the laurels acquired by a life of hard service; and despised by the very soldiers he had so lately been hounding on to massacre and plunder. Louis XVI. was not restored, the French youth were not intimidated, France was not dismembered.

It is, to us, a matter of astonishment that a lesson so fraught with instruction, should have been utterly lost upon Secretary Cameron when he advised the dismemberment of Virginia, or should not be remembered by Congress when they are about to pass a law in accordance with his recommendation. It the very moment that the Secretary is giving this advice, his grand army is cooped up in Washington, and its vicinity, without the courage to advance upon the territory it is to dispose of after a fashion so summary, and the fleet of which his brother secretary boasts so loudly, dare not attempt to force the passage of the Potomac. On two occasions they have ventured to poke their noses be yond their fortifications, and on both they have been handled in such a manner that their spirit has been utterly cowed. All history may be searched in vain for a rout so utterly disgraceful as that of Manassas; all history, since the battle of Cannie, fails to record a slaughter so terrible as that of Leesburg.--And yet, while Yankee pride is still smarting under the unredeemed disgrace of these successive defeats, and while their effect upon Yankee soldiers is so appalling that they dare not face their terrible enemy in the field, a Yankee Secretary recommends, and a Yankee Congress is prepared to approve, the partition of the very country in which reside those men who chased them like hanted hares, when they ventured beyond their fortifications and who now hold them close prisoners in their stronghold. We do not recollect ever to have heard or read of anything quite so ridiculous. The thundering proclamations of the Chinese Mandarins, and their threats against the French and English ‘"Rebels,"’ are by no means fit to be mentioned as parallel absurdities. The King of Dahomey, when he rises up from his dinner, and announces his permission to all the monarchs of the earth to dine since his own repast has been conclude, is, no doubt, a tolerably ludicrous object. But he is beaten so far by his Yankee rivals, that it is hardly worth while to mention him in the same breath.

The New York Herald, the most obsequious of slaves to the dynasty that has put its heel upon the neck of Yankeedom, echoes the threats of the Secretary with ferocious glee. ‘"His plan,"’ it says, ‘"is to dismember the rebel portions of that State, (Virginia,) and to partition up its territory after the fashion of Poland, among the States that have remained loyal to the Union." ’ Our readers need not be told that the partition of Poland was the most infamous political crime recorded in modern history. Nor after all they have seen of the Yankee despotism, will they wonder that it has been chosen as a model worthy of imitation by the Yankee Secretary. We venture to suggest, however, that there is some slight difference between the relative positions of the parties in the two cases. Poland was not dismembered until the bloody battle of Praga, and the atrocious massacre that followed had prostrated her military strength. Amid the flames of her capital, and the slaughtered my triads of her children, her savage conqueror wrote to his scarcely less savage mistress, ‘"order reigns in Warsaw."’ A Russian army of 100,000 men stood victorious in the midst of her people, a Prussian and an Austrian army, each of equal strength, were ready to lend their assistance if it were needed. But it was not, for her defenders were dead or in chains. It was an easy matter under such circumstances to divide her territory among those who had come to spoil her. Now, the Bull trotters, so far from having subdued the military strength of Virginia, dare not face her sons in the field. The Bull trotters partitioning Virginia! The Lord have mercy on us!

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