Richmond was fallen from its high estate, but it was a capital still. The brains, the pluck, and the pride of the rebellion are there, and the Rebel capital still leads the returning Rebel States. The Northern public scarcely appreciated the amount of journalistic talent concentrated there in the interest of the Rebel cause. The newspapers of Richmond, throughout the war, were in many respects the ablest on the continent. Their writing was often turgid, but it was always effective; and it shaped the public sentiment of the whole Confederacy. Mr. Davis himself was not above writing leaders for his organ, and Benjamin is reported to have been a frequent contributor. In the midst of their destitution they managed to keep up double the number of average dailies that we had in Washington, and the editorials of each were generally the productions of educated thinkers, as well as red-hot partisans. Fortunately or unfortunately, a share of the old ability and fervor clings to the revived newspapers of Richmond, and it is curious to see with what avidity the Virginians gulp down the praises of their heroic dead, in which they tend to indulge so freely, since it is no longer so safe to extol the deeds of the pardoned or pardon-seeking survivors. Yet, with all the fervid zeal of the newspapers, I doubt if the great mass of Virginians cared very much, in November, for any active participation in political movements. At the outset, they were disgusted with their vulgar, drunken Governor. Then their ablest men were all ineligible to office, because steeped in the rebellion; and they had the haughty pride of old families, which revolts against encouraging the aspirations of unknown or odious upstarts. And, besides, while they made a great show of establishing civil government, the galling consciousness remained that, whether they chose it or not, they _must_ walk in a certain path, or be suppressed by the military. As the Enquirer itself said: “As long as the civil authority is subordinate to the military, there can not and ought not to be any politics or any principles among a people so unhappily situated. A paper that is not as free to censure as to approve, has no virtue in its support, and no importance attaches to its utterances. Approbation is worthless where censure is forbid. The politics of the Enquirer, therefore, must be deferred until the return of those good times when a free press is the bulwark of the State.” Even the hated “Radicals” would be apt to indorse so lucid a statement of so sound a principle. But they might possibly make the argument prove more than would be pleasing to Richmond. If there “ought not to be any politics among a people so unhappily situated,” neither ought there to be the farce of a form without the substance of State Government.