ts his money to perpetuate so vile an institution as
slavery deserves not only to lose the interest upon his investment but
the principal as well. I therefore have not a grain of sympathy for
the greedy cormorants who invested their money in the so-called
Confederate Government. Neither have I any sympathy for the people of
the South who, having invested all their money in human flesh, found
themselves at the close of the Rebellion paupers in more senses than
one--being bankrupt in purse and unused to make an honest living by
honest labor--too proud to work and too poor to loaf.

In a question of this kind, no one disputes the power of Virginia to
contract debts to propagate opinions, erroneous or other, but it is a
question whether the people of one generation have the right to
tax--that is, enslave--the people of generations yet unborn. The
creation of public debts is pernicious in practice, productive of more
harm than good. What right have I to create debts for my grandson or
granddaughter? I have no right even to presume that I will have a
grandson, certainly none that he will be able to meet his own debts in
addition to those I entail upon him. The character of the people
called upon to settle the debt of Virginia, contracted in 1860, before
or immediately after, differed radically from the character of the
people who were called upon to tax themselves to cancel that debt. Not
only had the character of the people undergone a radical change; the
whole social and industrial mechanism of the state had undergone a
wonderful, almost an unrecognizable, metamorphosis. The haughty
aristocrat, with his magnificent plantation, his army of slaves, and
his "cattle on a thousand hills," who eagerly contracted the debt,
had been transformed into a sour pauper when called upon to honor his
note; while the magnificent plantation had been in many instances cut
into a thousand bits to make homes for the former slaves, now freemen
and citizens, the equals of "my lord," while "his cattle on a thousand
hills" had dwindled down to a stubborn jackass and a worn out milch
cow. True, the white man possessed, largely, the soil; but he was,
immediately after the war, utterly incapable of wringing from it the
bounty of Nature; he had first to be re-educated.

But, when the bloody rebellion was over, the country, in its sovereign
capacity, and by individual States, was called upon to deal with grave
questions growing out of the conflict. Mr.