and we are afforded a golden opportunity for settling forever the internal jealousies and dissensions which have hindered our material progress, and for completing the pacification of all the elements of the body politic. It devolves upon the white race now to consummate such settlement and pacification. In view of their acknowledged superiority in education and intelligence, as well as in numbers, their dominance in every department of the public service, their ownership of the great mass of taxable property, it would bring lasting opprobrium upon them if, while local self-government continues unimpaired, they should permit the existence of any pretext upon which adventurers might, by fomenting discord between the races, distract the peace and retard the progress of the State, or upon which any Federal legislation or intervention whatever might be invoked to the inevitable disturbance of internal tranquility. Non-residents, whatever their claims to eminence, ability or philanthropy, can never understand the character and circumstances, or wisely administer to the wants of our colored population. Ourselves and no others are qualified to perform the task assigned us by Providence. If not restrained and thwarted by superior power, wę will perform it resolutely and effectually by promoting the best interests of both races. We intend to perform it by scrupulously guarding the newlyacquired rights of the colored man; by affording him liberal facilities for education, and inciting him to use them; by developing his best qualities and capacities, and interesting him in the preservation of order and the enforcement of justice; by shielding him against devices of the vicious and thriftless; by habitually according him the kindness, forbearance and sympathy which his comparative dependence and weakness invite, and by cultivating such relations of active co-operation and mutual trust and common interest between the races as will combine both in recovering the general prosperity, and make each an indispensable instrumentality for that end.

Immigration and Reconstruction.

The two great material wants of Virginia are immigration and capital, and the influx of both has been retarded by extraordinary misconstruction abroad as to the sentiments and situation of our people. A leading desire with us, and a necessary condition precedent to our material recovery, is a lasting reconciliation and the return of complete normal relations between ourselves, on the one hand, and the people of all the other States and the government of the United States on the other. We earnestly seek to secure those relations upon the only steadfast and sure basis of equality of rights and benefits and mutuality of confidence and respect between all the members of the Union. The highest interests of the whole country demand for us the speedy establishment of such relations; for as our welfare for the future is bound up in that of the United States, so the prosperity of the whole depends upon the well-being of each of its constituent parts. The body of the Union cannot have health so long as any member suffers. As the revival of our material interests concerns the whole Union, so do the

recognition, and preservation, in the future, of the just pride, selfrespect and integrity of our people; for States decay and men degenerate with the loss of independence of thought and pride of character. Whether posterity shall adjudge us to have been right or wrong in the opinions which engaged us in war, yet if, as history teaches, the noble virtues of fortitude and courage belong to no people capable of dissimulation and treachery; if the voluntary endurance of a four years' ordeal of heroic suffering and sacrifice be proof of devotion and a spirit of honor, then the record of Virginia entitles her to the respect of mankind. Reluctant and slow to draw the sword, Virginia furnished for four years the chief theatre for the most sanguinary and devastating civil war which the modern history of the world records, and her bosom bore the deepest wounds its blows inflicted. With the dismemberment of her territory, the vast destruction of public and private property and other greater losses within her borders, her hereditary system of labor, her social polity, her banking capital and circulating medium were annihilated at a blow. As the conflict of arms closed, her sons returned to the ruins which were once their homes, and then and since have applied themselves to the pursuits of peace with industry, prudence and order such as are not paralleled in any history of periods next succeeding similar wars. In no instance has turbulence or commotion or any combination against public authority had organized existence among our people. Neither cherishing resentments nor repining over the irrevocable past; abating no jot of self-respect; yielding to no act of self-abasement; recognizing the indissoluble bond by which the destinies of Virginia are bound up with those of the Republic; they have with true and brave hearts and with uplifted brows sworn their fidelity to the restored Union; they have sternly accommodated themselves to their altered political relations, and have striven to bring order out of chaos and weal out of ruin by the faithful performance of every obligation. It is with the confidence which conscious self-respect inspires, it is in the spirit that becomes men, that we boldly claim reciprocity of respect and respectful good will between our fellowcitizens of the North and ourselves. What we want is peace with honor: not the name and forms, but the living realities of peace. It is cause for congratulation that, in every section of the country, the passions engendered by war have seemed to be passing away; and it is not to be doubted that, sooner or later, heroic deeds and qualities, on whatever side of the conflict or by whomsoever achieved and illustrated, will be preserved by the whole Republic as memorials of a common glory.

With a government of equal laws and with order and tranquility firmly established within our borders, with ardent desires for universal reconciliation, with hopeful auguries for the future, we invite immigrants from whatever section of our common country and of whatever nationality to cast their fortunes with ours. Let the living tides of immigration come. We vouch to all a cordial welcome and ample guarantees for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, whatever their political or religious affiliations of the past, present or future.

The natural advantages and resources of our State speak for themselves. For variety and fertility of soils, for diversity and peculiar value of agricultural productions, for salubrity and mildness of a climate exempt equally from the rigors and diseases prevalent in many northern, southern and western sections, for vast, various and easily accessible mineral wealth, for superiority and abundance of water-power and other requisites for unlimited manufacturing enterprises, for number, volume and depth of navigable rivers and excellence of ports and harbors, for all natural facilities for the development of internal and foreign commerce and material prosperity and power, Virginia may safely challenge, not only examination, but comparison with any other equal area on the earth's surface.

Political Party Relations.

The duties imposed upon us in the existing crisis, involving the reconstruction of the foundations of society, impel us to be guided by higher considerations than ordinarily control political party organizations. Of the people who confided to us our present trusts, a great majority is not identified with any existing national political party; and although they were formerly divided among opposing parties, they now stand united upon common Conservative principles. Adhering to those principles, Virginia seeks these ends:-to secure and maintain her full constitutional rights and relations, and to perform all her constitutional duties, as one of the co-equal members of the union; to exercise all rightful powers of self-government and to determine, adjust and regulate the internal, domestic and municipal interests of her people, their relations and rights, including such, as are known as civil rights, in strict conformity to the Federal constitution and the late decision of the Supreme Court of the United States expounding recent amendments thereto, and the respective powers of the Federal and State governments thereunder; to obtain an equitable settlement of her just claims against the common government; to promote universal reconciliation upon the basis of equal justice to all the States and people; to cultivate harmonious relations with the common government, and to yield a liberal support to every department thereof co-operating in the accomplishment of the ends thus sought. Virginia, recognizing no such obligations as bind her to any national party organization, maintaining her fidelity to all who are and who shall become allies in the defence of measures calculated to secure the ends named, is ready to co-operate cordially with men of whatever party in upholding those measures, by whomsoever proposed, supporting those who support them, and opposing all opposition to them. One of the articles, announcing the principles and purposes recently ratified by an overwhelming majority of our people, declares that, disclaiming all purpose of captious hostility to the present executive head of the Federal government, "we will judge him impartially by his official action, and will co-operate in every measure of his administration which may be beneficent in design and calculated to promote the welfare of the people

and cultivate sentiments of good will between the different sections of the Union." This article was no political expedient of the hour. It embodies the sentiments of honorable men, and binds by the obligations of good faith and justice. It pledges such liberal support as may be consistent with our principles and justified by the developments of the future. I recommend its reaffirmation by the general assembly, if no untoward event occur to forbid such action.

Let none suppose that we attach importance to the dispensation of the official patronage of the Federal government in Virginia, or take interest in it beyond desiring to see appointments conferred upon honest and capable men. If any imagine our people can be influenced by such paltry considerations, they fail to comprehend the moral and political level on which we stand.

In a period of declining political partisanship, when national parties seem to be in process of transition and transformation, Virginia stands upon her own firm ground of catholic patriotism, of constitutional justice and equality, of universal peace and reconciliation; ground broad enough and fit, if not destined, to be occupied by all good men of all parties.

The United States and the Debt of Virginia.

While resolutely rendering full justice to all others, we seek with confidence that justice for want of which our State suffers. Virginia has just claims upon the United States, the consideration of which ought not longer to be postponed. In time of war, and as one of a series of war measures, the United States dismembered our State, making no provision in respect to her previously contracted debt, for the payment of which both the now dissevered parts had united in pledging the faith of the whole. The responsibility of the debt was left between Virginia and West Virginia, with no arrangement for its equitable distribution between them, and with such conflict of claims as renders any voluntary settlement or compromise on the part of the two States plainly impossible; while neither has such remedy as the exigency demands for enforcing an adjustment.

The United States, in controlling the dismemberment of Virginia, failed to adjust necessary terms of separation, failed to make any provision against the grave and perplexing difficulties which have resulted, and such failure has postponed and seriously interfered with the rights of public creditors, has left the seeds of alienation between States and between the people and the government, has imposed upon us unjust burthens which repress the energies of our people, restrict our means of providing for public education, and hinder the material recovery of the State. The government of the United States by its action prevented the State from fulfilling its obligations: it intervened disastrously between Virginia and her creditors, and cut the body of the debtor in twain with the sword.

In asking the United States to assume and discharge our State debt, or at least to so readjust its own work as to relieve us of unfair burthens, we are not involved in any discussion of the power of the Federal

government, under ordinary circumstances, to assume debts of the States. We are invoking that government to perform a duty incident to war, and to exercise authority inherent in war-making power, by adjusting the incomplete acts and unrectified results of war, and by adjusting them in accordance with indisputable principles and precedents of equity and public law. If the government of the United States should now, in the plenitude of its wealth and power, restore prosperity to our State by assuming her debt, a paltry burthen on the national treasury, but grievous to us in our poverty, it would only in small measure make return for the vast donation with which the munificence of Virginia endowed the Union in its weakness and infancy.

The United States and the Education of the Colored Population.

Another unadjusted result of the war is made manifest in the new and enormous burthens imposed by the peculiar circumstances under which Virginia assumes the task of educating her colored population and administering justice among them. Before their emancipation, the cost of governing and administering justice among the colored population, and of maintaining paupers of that class, was mainly and directly borne by the slave-holder. Yet now not only that charge, but the far greater charge of educating the colored race, is imposed upon the public treasury, so that our burthens are enormously increased at the time of our greatest impoverishment and depression. At the date of the destruction of a large proportion of our taxable resources, we are entrusted with the care and education of more than a half million of the "wards of the nation," without being provided with the indispensable means for executing the trust.

Let us not be misunderstood. Deplorable consequences must result from such ouster of State authority, as would be involved in any interference with the administration of our public schools by the Federal government. The enforced application of civil rights, as commonly understood, to our State schools, would prove quickly destructive of the educational system, arrest the enlightenment of the colored race, produce continual irritation between the races, counteract the pacification and development now happily progressing, repel immigration, greatly augment emigration, re-open wounds now almost healed, engender new political asperities, and paralyze the power and influence of the State government for duly controlling and promoting domestic interests and preserving internal harmony.

Nevertheless, justice, humanity and the best interests of the colored race and of the country at large, invoke the common government to enable us to effectuate its policy of educating and elevating our newlyenfranchised population, by supplying to the State the necessary means to that end.

Inequalities in the Distribution of National Currency.

The financial panic, or money famine, productive of such distress