In all the changes and mutations of human society, there is scarcely any parallel to this change of ideas in Virginia, or to this extraordinary transformation which has changed the descendants of the old Norman aristocracy into the firmest and most reliable defenders of democracy. Of course, the early colonists of Virginia were of all classes and conditions of English society; not a few of them, perhaps, were kidnapped young peasants, without friends or relatives to protect them or to punish the base wretches who carried them over the sea and sold them here, as elsewhere, in the American colonies. But it is undoubtedly true that a larger, vastly larger body of “gentlemen” emigrated to Virginia than to any other colony, and as these were all cadets, or younger branches of the great houses in England, nearly all of which were Norman in descent, and nearly all of which in the direct line afterward perished in the wars of the commonwealth, it would seem equally certain that if there be any Norman blood anywhere, it must now be found, or mainly found, in Virginia. The cause of this transformation, this radical and extraordinary change of opinion, which has made the descendants of the proudest and most despotic aristocracy ever known the authors and main supporters of democracy, must be a potent one, and as far removed from the ordinary causes which, in the progress of time, modify men’s opinions and habits, as the results themselves are extraordinary and without parallel. As has been remarked, all our ideas and mental habits are the result of circumstances, the external influences that surround us, the changed conditions of our existence, which give origin to new thoughts and new modes of mental action. And when we take these things into view and contemplate the changed conditions, the new and altogether different circumstances that surrounded these Virginia descendants of the cavaliers and gentlemen of England, then the causes are obvious—the new ideas that sprung up in men’s minds, legitimate and consistent with the extraordinary and indeed unparalleled circumstances under which they lived. They were in juxtaposition with negroes, with an inferior race, with widely different and subordinate social elements, and new thoughts, new ideas, as well as altogether different habits, naturally and necessarily followed. They saw these negroes were different beings from themselves, not in color alone, or in other physical characteristics, but in their mental qualities, their affections, their wants, in short, in their _nature_ and the necessities of their social life, their welfare and happiness, and indeed the welfare of this subordinate element, demanded corresponding action, with, of course, corresponding ideas and modes of thought. They saw that this negro was not artificially or accidentally, but naturally different from themselves, that God himself had made him different and given him different