The Perils of peace.
--If the fruits of the
Southern Revolution are not to turn to ashes in our hands, the framers of our laws must impose not only restrictions, but a total prohibition, upon the exercise of the right of suffrage by persons coming here after the war from the
North.
It should require, as is the case in
England, a special legislative enactment to naturalize any individual emigrant.
If
Virginia is to become, as is probable, a great manufacturing State, we shall have
Lynn and
Lowell transferred at the end of the war to our Old Dominion watercourses; and if
Lynn and
Lowell are to be permitted to vote in
Virginia, we should like to know whether
Lynn and
Lowell are expected to vote for any policy that favors the perpetuation of
African slavery.
We have no hesitation in saying that
Virginia, under such a state of things, would be worse off than she ever was before the war, or could have been under
Lincoln's administration. --What is the
South in arms for, if, after a long and bloody struggle, and such generous and heroic sacrifices as no people ever made before, the men who are invading us, who are butchering our sons and brothers, and threatening to consign the women of the
South to the most horrible of fates, are to be permitted to come among us in the guise of friends, and despairing of subjugating us in the field, subjugate us at the ballot box.
Of all populations in the world, the manufacturing population of
New England is the very last we desire to see in
Virginia.
It is the most ignorant, sensual, intermeddling, and immoral of all the
Puritan herd.
There is no question of politics, theology, ethics, or science the
New England manufacturers do not feel themselves competent to solve.
They conceive themselves capable not only of manufacturing hollow brass trunk rivets and shoes with brown paper soles, but they make a bran new constitution in a day and turn out a new religion in a night.
To
New England belongs the honor of inventing every
ism that has ever distracted
America.
The deluded votaries of Spiritualism, Mormonism, Free Love, are made up principally of its manufacturing population.
The idea that the rural population of
Virginia — the most manly, generous, refined population in the world — are to be invaded at every waterfall and every mountain stream by hordes of
New England artisans, is bad enough; but if, in addition to this, they are to wield political power in this State, and thus be enabled to extinguish and expel slavery from
Virginia, we might as well never have taken up arms; for if
Lincoln had done his worst he could only have inaugurated a system for gradual abolition in the border States--a work which we will perform ourselves if we do not confine the right of suffrage to our own people.
