"Commerce has long ago spread her sails, and sailed away from you. You have not, as yet, dug more than coal enough to warm yourselves at your own hearths; you have set no tilt-hammer of Vulcan to strike blows worthy of gods in your own iron-foundries; you have not yet spun more than coarse cotton enough, in the way of manufacture, to clothe your own slaves. You have no commerce, no mining, no manufactures. You have relied alone on the single power of agriculture, and _such agriculture_! Your sedge-patches outshine the sun. Your inattention to your only source of wealth, has seared the very bosom of mother earth. Instead of having to feed cattle on a thousand hills, you have had to chase the stump-tailed steer through the sedge-patches to procure a tough beef-steak. The present condition of things has existed too long in Virginia. The landlord has skinned the tenant, and the tenant has skinned the land, until all have grown poor together." With tears in its eyes, and truth on its lips, for the first time after an interval of twenty years, the _Richmond Enquirer_ helps to paint the melancholy picture. In 1852, that journal thus bewailed the condition of Virginia:-- "We have cause to feel deeply for our situation. Philadelphia herself contains a population far greater than the whole free population of Eastern Virginia. The little State of Massachusetts has an aggregate wealth exceeding that of Virginia by more than $126,000,000." Just a score of years before these words were penned, the same paper, then edited by the elder Ritchie, made a most earnest appeal to the intelligence and patriotism of Virginia, to adopt an effectual measure for the speedy overthrow of the damnable institution of human bondage. Here is an extract from an article which appeared in its editorial column under date of January 7th, 1832: