Is it not plain, then, _why_ they do so, who oppose and hate the influence and ideas of New England? If anything could measure the utter vileness of slavery and its degrading effect on the mind, it would be the consideration of the unblushing assurance with which its lovers defend it, and at the same time assail those sacred principles which lie at the root of our national life, and without which we are dead and cumbering the ground. Our nation holds _in trust_ certain principles, for the successful carrying out of which the nations of the earth wait in hushed and anguished expectancy, and in the failure of which we should be no better than any of the effete, defunct peoples of buried ages; or, rather, in the failure to bring them to a triumphant vindication, we had far better be as Sodom and Gomorrah. These principles are now the stake for which the loyal men of the land are gladly offering up life, treasure, children, _all_, so they but win. We hear a great deal, nowadays, from rebel sources, of the different race which settled Virginia and Carolina from that which peopled New England, and the immeasurable superiority of the former. If the mouthpiece of the confederacy, Mr. Jefferson Davis, may be believed, the latter and their descendants are not worthy even to be the _slaves_ of the former, and are a degree lower in the scale of creation than the _hyenas_! Differing in language, manners, customs, ideas, there is no possibility of a peaceable union, say the confederate organs. In fine, language is exhausted of epithets expressive of their scorn, contempt, and hatred of the _Yankees_, as they are opprobriously nicknamed. But do these men ignore the fact that the original settlers of both New England and Virginia were purely English? They were from the same stock precisely. As to the _character_ of each, I cannot do better than to quote from a work of which Americans may well be both glad and proud, a work that has set us and our institutions in a truer and juster light than any before it. I allude to the work of M. De Tocqueville on 'Democracy in America.' In volume first, chapter fifth, he says: 'The men sent to Virginia were seekers of gold, adventurers without resources and without character, whose turbulent and restless spirits endangered the infant colony, and rendered its progress uncertain. The artisans and agriculturists arrived afterward; and although they were a more moral and orderly race of men, they were in no wise above the level of the inferior classes in England. No lofty conceptions, no intellectual system, directed the foundation of these new settlements.' He adds, in a note: 'It was not till some time later, that a certain number of rich English capitalists came to fix themselves in the colony.'