The calamities which are here set forth in such graphic terms have by no means been confined to the fathers and the sons of the forest. The _white_ young men of Virginia, in great numbers, have since been educated in like manner "at Northern Colleges," or nearer home: and when restored to their parents and guardians have been found, for the most part, like the sons of the _red men_, to be "_absolutely good for nothing_." They have proved to be "miserable runners." Not one in twenty of them has risen to eminence in professional life. They could "bear neither hunger nor cold." They were practically ignorant of mechanical and agricultural employments, and strongly averse to them; too high minded and indolent to labor, and too weak and effeminate to "serve as warriors, and hunters, and counsellors." Will Virginian parents learn a lesson from their own past experience and that of their savage predecessors? The corrective which we propose for the evil complained of, (and it is too serious for merriment,) is the immediate introduction of the manual labor system into all our institutions of learning. If this feature is introduced and kept up in them, with a prominence proportioned to its importance, our youth, who are educated in them, if not fitted for usefulness and distinction in the departments of law, medicine and theology, will not be utterly "spoiled" as the sons of the _red men_ were; but will be good "runners," useful and respectable laborers, mechanics, planters, and farmers. This, after all, is the population, of which, more than any other, Virginia needs an increase. The low state of mechanic arts and of agriculture among us, or rather the prevailing vice of _indolence_, is the true source of the present disasters which are so often made the theme of popular declamation by stump orators and upstart politicians. It is _indolence_, more than any or every thing else, that checks the spirit of enterprise; that covers this fairest portion of our continent with _sackcloth_, and spreads over it the sable shroud of desolation. Let then a revolution be effected in our system of education. Let our youth be trained for the duties of practical life. Let them be instructed in what is useful, as well as ornamental; and let them bring minds stored with the riches of learning and science, to bear and act on _the subject of most absorbing temporal interest to the American people_, I mean the neglected subject of _agriculture_, and all will yet be well. The citizens of the South will then be independent indeed, and not in boast. Labor, like "marriage," will be "honorable in all." The work which misguided abolitionists are laboring, with a zeal that would be becoming in a better cause, to perform {252} by a meddlesome and violent interference, will be effected by the gradual and voluntary agency of her own inhabitants. Her population will multiply. Commerce will thrive. Barren fields will be clothed with verdure.