offered by change half the time amounts to but little more than
the substitution of King Stork for King Log. It may not be
agreeable to the pride, recollections, and national traditions of
the Hungarian, or the Italian, to submit to the sway of a German;
but it may well be questioned if the substitutes they would offer
for the present form of government would greatly tend to the
amelioration of the respective people.
{L'Europe sera.... = Europe will, in fifty years, be either
republican or cossack [French]; Paul = Paul I, Tsar of Russia
from 1796 to 1801; King Stork for King Log = from Aesop's Fables}
What is true in the Old World will, in the end, be found to be
true here. To us, it would seem that the portion of the people of
this country, whom we should term the disinterested, or those who
have no direct connection with slavery, on the one hand, or with
fanaticism, and its handmaid demagogism, on the other, should
turn their attention solely to the achievement of a single
object. They have the strength to do it, if they only had the
will. By compelling the disturbers of the public peace to submit
to the control of the government, and to cease their meddling and
wanton invasion of the security and property of their brothers
and neighbors, the question of slavery would soon take care of
itself. A single generation would, probably, see it confined in a
great measure to the extreme Southern and Southwestern States;
for, under the present emigration from Europe, it cannot be long
before the upper counties of even the Carolinas and Georgia will
make the discovery that the introduction of a single white man
will be really of more importance to them than that of a dozen
negroes. Could Virginia be made to see her true interests in this
behalf, the glory of the Old Dominion would speedily revive, and
her fine population of gentlemen would shortly take its place
again where it so properly belongs, in the foremost ranks of the
nation. We require an exchange with that quarter of the country,
for we could give that which she greatly needs, and receive in
exchange that which would probably not a little benefit
ourselves. Puritanism, most especially when it breaks out of
bonds by the process of emigration, does not always produce the
most acceptable fruits; while, on the other hand, the descendants
of the Cavaliers might obtain homely lessons, of great practical
benefit, from the utilitarian spirit of the whole North.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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