One fifth of the whole population of the State over twenty years of age cannot read at all, and this would give about 20,000 voters who can neither read nor write. Of these nineteen twentieths may be set down as belonging to the Gerrymandering party that has ruled the State, being at least six times the majority by which it has been so long administered in the interests of the South. The celebrated "tenth legion," the stronghold of what is called Democracy, has in it little short of two thousand voters who can neither read nor write, and whose votes are given, invariably, for the pro-slavery candidate, and it is by such men that the majority is furnished. The day is not, however, distant when the intelligence and moral feeling of the State will obtain some control over its management; for already its people are awaking to the fact that with every advantage nature could give them, they are declining in wealth and power, while the State is diminishing from year to year in its influence upon the movements of the Union. Her people are now being told by The Lynchburg Virginian that,

"Her coal fields are the most extensive in the world, and her coal of the best and purest quality. Her iron deposits are altogether inexhaustible, and in many instances so pure, that it is malleable in its primitive state, and many of these deposits in the immediate vicinity of extensive coat fields. She has, too, very extensive deposits of copper, lead, and gypsum. Her rivers are numerous and bold, generally with fall enough for extensive water power. The James River, at Richmond, affords a convertible water-power, immensely superior to that of the Merrimack, at Lowell, and not inferior to that of the Genesee, at Rochester. The James River, at her passage through the Blue Ridge, and the Potomac, at Harper's Ferry, both afford great water-power. The Kanawha, or New River, has an immense fall. There is hardly a section of five miles between the Falls of Kanawha and the North Carolina line, that has not fall enough for working the most extensive machinery. . remarkable feature in the mining and manufacturing prospects of Virginia is the ease and economy with which all her minerals are mined; instead of being, as in England and elsewhere, generally imbedded deep within the bowels of the earth, from which they can be got only with great labor and at great cost, ours are found every where on the hills and slopes, with their ledges dipping in the direction of the plains below. Why, then, should not Virginia at once employ at least half of her labor and capital in mining and manufacturing? Richmond could as profitably manufacture all cotton and woollen goods as Lowell, or any other town in New England. Why should not Lynchburg, with all her promised facility of getting coal and pig metal, manufacture all articles of iron and steel just as cheaply, and yet as profitably, as any portion of the Northern States? Why should not every town and village on the line of every railroad in the State, erect their shops, in which they may manufacture a thousand articles of daily consumption, just as good and cheap as they may be made any where?"

Simply because Virginia has preferred to manufacture her corn into negroes, by the sale of which to purchase her cloth and her iron, rather than take for herself the protection required to enable her to make her cloth, her iron, her railroad bars, and her steam-engines at home. She has been the steady advocate of the policy that looked to the depression of the free laborer to the condition of the slave, when her true interests lay in the direction which looked towards the elevation of the slave to the condition of a freeman. She has pursued a policy that has kept her, as The Virginian further says,

"Dependent upon Europe and the North for almost every yard of cloth, and every coat and boot and hat we wear; for our axes, scythes, tubs, and buckets-in short, for every thing except our bread and meat? It must occur to the South that if our relations with the North should ever be severed and how soon they may be none can know (may God avert it long!) we would, in all the South, not be able to clothe ourselves. We could not fell our forests, plough our fields, nor mow our

meadows. In fact, we should be reduced to a state more abject than we are willing to look at, even prospectively. And yet with all these things staring us in the face, we shut our eyes, and go on blindfold."

All this is most true, but why is it so? Because whenever, under the free labor policy, as in the years 1844 to 1847, any attempt is made at establishing manufactures in Virginia, the representatives of its tenth legion in the House and in the Senate are always found ready with their votes to crush the unfortunate man who has been induced so to invest his capital. Her Senators even now stand, as we believe, instructed to vote for the abolition of the duty on railroad iron, and yet she is capable of furnishing the whole demand of the Union for that important commodity. To the folly of this course, her people are now becoming awake, and even The Richmond Enquirer tells its readers that,

"In no State of the Confederacy do the facilities for manufacturing operations exist in greater profusion than in Virginia. Every condition essential to success in these employments is found here in prodigal abundance and in a peculiarly convenient combination. First, we have a limitless supply of water-power-the cheapest of motors in localities easy of access. So abundant is this supply of waterpower that no value is attached to it distinct from the adjacent lands, except in the vicinity of the larger towns. On the Potomac and its tributaries; on the Rappahannock; on the James and its tributaries; on the Roanoke and its tributaries; on the Holston, the Kanawha, and other streams, numberless sites may be found where the supply of water-power is sufficient for the purposes of a Lawrence or a Lowell. Nor is there any want of material for building at these localities; timber and granite are abundant; and, to complete the circle of advantages, the climate is genial and healthful, and the Boil eminently productive. Another advantage which Virginia possesses for the manufacture of cotton is the proximity of its mills to the raw material. At the present prices of the staple, the value of this advantage is estimated at ten per cent. Our railway system, penetrating into every part of the State, will facilitate the transfer of cotton to the most remote localities. Instead of expatiating on the causes of the shameful neglect of the magnificent resources and advantages for manufacturing operations which Virginia possesses in such abundance, we choose rather to suggest some reasons why the State should, especially at this particular juncture, apply its energy and capital to this inviting field of enterprise. One among the inevitable effects of the crisis in Europe, is the comparative prostration of the manufacturing interest in Great Britain. The withdrawal of capital from the operations of trade to sustain the operations of war - the general rise in the price of bread the stringency, uncertainty, and sudden fluctuations in the money market-will all contribute to impair the ability of Great Britain to maintain its ascendency; while, in consequence of the rupture of old commercial relations, new and exclusive markets will be thrown open to the products of American industry. Moreover, in this general interruption of trade and prostration of the manufacturing interest, the great Southern staple must suffer unless an original and compensating demand for cotton be created in this country. Leaving out of view its effect on the general prosperity of the State, the creation of a new demand for labor by manufacturing enterprises would tend to arrest the tide which annually sweeps away so large a portion of our Slave population. The increase in the value of Slave property, consequent on the demand for labor on our works of internal improvement, has already partially checked the trade to the South. An additional counter demand would stop it entirely."

This is almost true. "An additional counter demand" for labor would terminate the domestic Slave-trade, to the great advantage of the Slave, his owner, and the State. The establishment of such a demand would, however, be entirely impossible in connection with any Southern Union, for the repudiation of protection is a cardinal principle with all the advocates of such a Union. They seek to have free trade in the importation of cloth, iron, and negroes, whereas Virginia needs either protection for cloth and iron, or a continuation of that protection to the negro trade that

she has so long enjoyed, and without which she cannot exist, unless, as suggested by The Enquirer, she establishes such a "counter demand" for labor as shall render her soil attractive of immigration, instead of being, as heretofore, so repulsive as to drive from it not only the slave but the free population.

In the last thirty years, the politicians who have Gerrymandered the State have governed it with special regard to their own private interests; and have thus compelled the export of population to such an extent as to have built up an extreme South, that now proposes to act for itself in opposition to all the States north of South Carolina and Alabama, as was done by the former State and Georgia at the time of the formation of the Constitution. They desire to free themselves from the necessity for paying high prices for Virginia slaves when Africans can be bought at low ones, and they therefore repudiate altogether the idea of having her or Kentucky, North Carolina or Tennessee, in the new Union, that is, as we are told, to people "the noble region of the tropics;" to "control" their productions, "and with them the commerce of the world." "We will not have them," say they- "we do not want them; we desire to have no grain-growing State; Virginia and North Carolina may go where they please, but they shall not be admitted to our companionship." Such are the circumstances under which Virginia now exists, and those who will reflect upon this will, as we think, come to the conclusion at which we long since have arrived, that it is not only absolutely impossible that any Southern Union should be formed embracing the States north of South Carolina and Alabama, but equally impossible that the present attitude of the extreme South should fail to produce in the more northern of the Slave States a feeling of the necessity for strengthening themselves by an adoption of the policy of those north of them, with which their interests must, of necessity, continue to be connected.

THE REAL DISUNIONISTS.

The only States that can by any possibility secede from their connection with the North, are South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, and the five States that have been formed from the territory purchased by the Union, and mainly at Northern cost, for the South, to wit, Florida, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas. These eight States, that now undertake to dictate the whole policy of the Union, contained at the last census four millions of persons, of whom nearly eighteen hundred thousand were property, enabling less than two and a quarter millions of whites to countervail in the House of Representatives the votes of three and a quarter millions of Northern freemen. To the Senate they furnished sixteen members, while New York, and tho two adjoining States, with almost seven and a half millions of people, none of whom are property, gave but six, and thus it has been that this population, so insignificant in point of numbers or wealth, has been enabled to tax the North for the accomplishment of its purposes.

The South, the formidable South, of which we hear so much, constitutes then, at the present moment, so far as the white population, which is the element of strength, less than one tenth of the Union, but so far as regards the black population, which is the element of weakness, it is more than one half of the Union.

The North, the poor and contemptible North, that lives, as we are told, upon the contributions of the South, possesses at this moment twenty millions of free white people who sell their own labor, while it contains but a million and a half of men, women, and children, of the class whose labor is sold by others. To compare the two, as regards strength, would be to compare the infant with the full-grown man, or the pygmy with the giant ; and yet, this weak and insignificant South has been permitted to direct, and does now direct, the policy of the Union. Sinbad like, the North has permitted the South to mount its shoulders, and to play the part of "the old man of the sea," until Northern patience has become at length exhausted, and Northern men have begun to calculate the real strength of the faction by which their destinies have been so long determined.

The South desires now to purchase Cuba, to obtain possession of Hayti, to conquer Mexico, to add the British and French West Indies to the new Slave Republic; then' to open the territory of the Amazon to cultivation by slaves, and thus, in concert with Brazil, to obtain, as it says, control of "the commerce of the world." Among the earliest of the measures required for the accomplishment of these great objects is the reopening of the African Slave-trade, with the view to obtaining what is so much desired by English manufacturers and American planters, a cheap and abundant supply of slave-labor.

This is a magnificent scheme, but what is it to cost, and whence are to come the means for its accomplishment? A hundred millions have already been offered by the South for Cuba alone, and the price of two hundred and fifty millions has since been mentioned. To purchase the control of Hayti would require many millions, and yet this would constitute but a very small portion of the very numerous millions that would be required for reintroducing Slavery into the other islands, and for reestablishing the Slave-trade in the face of the unanimous decision of the world, that it is to be regarded as piracy, and treated as such. To do all this would require fleets and armies of great power, and if we add the cost of them to payments for land, it will, we think, be fair to say that the scheme of the South cannot be carried into effect at a smaller cost than fifty millions of dollars a year, in addition to the ordinary expenditures of government. Since the South obtained control in 1829, it has swelled the expenditures from twelve millions to more than forty, and there is no reason to doubt that if Southern domination be continued, they will be swelled to sexenty, or fifty millions more than would be required for the maintenance of a government administered on Northern principles.

In the event of secession, however, the South-that is to say, the peo

True, as inspired prophecy. Already, in 1850, only five years after this was published, the expenses have run up to nearly $80,000,000 a year.

J. R.

ple of the eight States of the extreme South-would have to pay for the cost of carrying out their schemes; and we may, therefore, properly inquire into the extent of their means for doing this. They have about two and a half millions of bales of cotton to sell, and at present prices those may be set down at about ninety millions of dollars. The sugar trade would perish from the moment of secession, and the sugar planters would be driven to cotton, the effect of which would be a large reduction in its price. We will, however, admit that the new republic may export cotton and rice to the amount of a hundred millions of dollars, or twentyfive dollars per head of its Free and Slave population, and that is certainly the highest estimate that can be made. With this hundred millions it will have to purchase its silks and its laces, its cottons and woollens, its wagons, carriages, and furniture; its axes and ploughs, its mules and horses, and much of its food, and when these shall be paid for there will remain small means for maintaining the fleets and armies required for carrying into effect its numerous and extensive schemes of aggrandizeinent. It has now entire freedom of trade in by far the largest part of all the commodities required for its consumption, but under its new system, a duty of fifty per cent, upon all the commodities that entered within its limits would by no means suffice for its expenditures. The first act of the new "free trade" Union would, of necessity, be an increased interference with trade. The Southern mode of carrying on a government is, however, chiefly by aid of loans. Under the Northern system, that prevailed from 1829 to 1833, we paid off our debt. Under the Southern one, that prevailed from 1834 to 1842, we contracted a new debt at six per cent., after having paid off one at three per cent. Under the tariff of 1842, we commenced anew to reduce the debt, but when the South again obtained control of the government, we ran again into debt for the maintenance of war for the accomplishment of Southern objects. Such being the case, we may reasonably suppose that the new Slave republic would, in the outset, endeavor to stretch its credit, and thus as far as possible avoid the necessity for taxation. Here, however, it would encounter great difficulties. Of the eight States there are three that have not yet paid their old debts; and until they shall do so, they will never be permitted to contract a new one. Texas, Mississippi, and Florida are now in a state of repudiation, and they would constitute three eighths of the new republic. Such a Union would have no credit even for the most laudable purposes, and still less when its object was boldly proclaimed to be to "reopen the African Slave-trade," to "preserve domestic servitude," and to "defy the power of the world." The commercial credit of such a community would be on a par with that of Algiers, Tripoli, Tunis, or any other piratical State. Neither Europe nor America would lend money for the promotion of such objects, particularly when it was clearly seen that the only effect of the accomplishment of Southern schemes would be to increase the quantity of Southern produce pressing on the market, and to diminish its price. Every capitalist knows well that the larger the quantity of a commodity that must be sold, the poorer and more dependent must become its producer. Every such man