Valley Virginian

It is an idle wish, a forlorn hope, truly says the Charlottesville Chronicle that all the old pleasant and profitable relations between the North and South can be restored in a few months or a few years. Equally vain is the expectation that mere legislation can accomplish this result. Just as there are "griefs which lie too deep for tears," so there are evils and sorrows immedicable by laws. The struggle has been too long and too deadly--there have been too many outrages committed on one side, and too many bitter taunts and revilings uttered on the other, to allow the maxim of "Forget and Forgive" to have full play as yet. Until some more potent corrective is applied there is but little prospect of fraternization between two sections, one of which believes that it can suffer no further loss, and the other that it can attain no higher glory. The South does not see that the North can in any way contribute to its happiness, and the North has forgotten in its exultation that the South is so necessary to its prosperity. The South is slow to believe that it has returned to "the best government the world ever saw," when it is denied representation in its councils, and only knows of its existence from the tax collector and the military supervisor. The North is afraid to admit to power a people who have but lately shown such anxiety to sever all the bonds which bound them together. The South still listens to the bitter repinings of her old politicians--the North follows too readily the crude propositions of her new ones. In avoiding Disintegration she has become enamored of Consolidation--the equilibrium has not been regained and the whole "machine" is still subject to alarming oscillations. The South is so utterly exhausted that it cannot find the means of resuscitation--the North is so bloated with unwholesome wealth that it scorns to assist its prostrate sister. The war has ceased in the Field, but alas! we fear it still rages in the Heart!

The best plan is, as when friends sometimes get too warm on politics, to "talk about something else." Let us endeavor to reunite the broken fragments of trade--let us invite the Northerner to take up his abode amongst us--let us watch his habits of thrift and industry and "cleave to that which is good"--let us always be mindful that Pride and Poverty make the worst company in the world--let us teach our former adversaries that neither our dignity nor refinement nor energy depend upon the possession of scores of slaves--let us teach those who were once slaves that while we can be kind and just, that we mean to be free ourselves also--let us light the torch of Hope at the lamp of Experience and the future will no longer be darkening before us. In this way the mighty interests of the country can once more be blended and beautified--and North and South, divided for a time, like our great Mississippi, by some thwarting island, will mingle their currents, again recover their mighty music, and flow in majesty and power forever.

The Georgetown Daily Union of the 24th inst., says in regard to the Registration of votes: The registration of persons claiming the right to vote proceeded quietly today. The number of negroes about the door exceeded that of yesterday, but the number registered has not been quite so large, owing to the examination being prolonged by a large number of negroes coming from the Freedmen's Village in Virginia and Washington. There is not the least doubt that fully one half of the negroes registered here are not residents of the town, but it is impossible for the Board to decide in the matter, as the only evidence they have is the applicant's word. From the answers given by the colored applicant it can readily be seen that they have been regularly trained and about the same instructions given to all, for instance, when a negro is asked his age he almost invariably answers he was twenty-one or twenty-two years old, as the case may be last March; and, out of twenty five we counted, according to this statement, all were born on a day between the first of February and the fourth of March. Not one out of that number said he was born after the fourth of March. From present indications it will take more than three days to register all the voters.

Among other enterprises springing up in our County it may not be out of time or place to mention the "Virginia Porcelean and Earthen Ware Works," situated on South River, 7 miles South of Waynesboro'. These works were commenced in Confederate times, and with Confederate money, but little progress could be made in their erection and efficiency, in consequence of the Company's inability to procure machinery and articles necessary for their construction, and the manufacture of ware. Since the close of the war, all available means and measures have been employed to erect and place the works in proper condition. Its superior advantages class it among the first establishments of the kind in America, no pains or cost having been spared in procuring and putting up the best and latest improved machinery and fixtures. Its clay, raised immediately on the ground, is of the finest and purest quality; making the finest white and granite ware, and the supply is inexhaustible. We understand that this Company, under the Superintendence of J. S. Lipscomb, an old soldier, will be prepared and will do a large amount of work in the Spring. We have seen specimens of the ware made at these works, and they can not be surpassed. A large amount of money has been expended in establishing these works, and it is to such enterprises that we must look for our material independence, with which, necessarily, comes political power.

A remark of Coleridge, says the Richmond Whig, that the land-owning class is always the stationary class in politics, is most true. This country may be cited as a striking illustration of it. The land owner derives his fixed notions from the circumstances by which he is surrounded. He lives day after day, month after month, year after year, amid the same unchanging scenes. He is on the same farm, sees the same trees, the same regular succession of seasons and crops, the same neighbors. Year after year he sees the same sights and hears the same sounds. Like those animals that take their color from the objects on which they live, the agricultural class seem to derive their character for fixity from the stable, permanent and unchanging objects around them.

Much of the firm, earnest, unshifting political character of the Southern people is due, doubtless, to this. The great bulk of them live in the country, and cultivate their lands--lands that have, in many instances, descended from father to son for several generations. This class constitutes the predominant class in the Southern States. We have few large cities, and townspeople are almost lost in the general aggregate of population.

It is different at the North. The country is there fast losing its rural character. Cities, towns and villages are springing up in every direction. Agriculture is not the main pursuit. Commerce, manufactures and all the varied forms of industry are pursued. Men herd together. The events of to-day obliterate those of yesterday. There is a constant whirl. Men and things are ever in motion. Travel, change, variety present a never-ending fluctuation. The solitary man loses his separate, atomic influence. Individualism is lost, except in the case of a few prominent individuals, who do for the tumultuous masses the thinking that they have not the time to do for themselves. These individuals and the masses act and react upon each other. While the former think for the latter, they derive from the rushing, human tide most of their inspirations. It imparts to them something of its own energy and rapidity of motion. It makes them think quickly and warmly. They tire of stability and sameness, and live only in perpetual change.

In such a whirl of men and things reason and virtue are crowded out. Expediency and a kind of quick, selfish business instinct usurp their places. They control these whirling masses in their business, their pleasures, and their politics. Their only religion is success, their only guiding principles those expedients that will secure it. In the hot contagion of motion and change, old standards are disregarded, and aberrations are made respectable by numbers. Everything in this country depends upon public opinion, and the unstable public opinion of the North tears down old systems and builds up new ones in an inconceivably short time. The man who assails the Constitution ceases to be odious and becomes a patriot because the crowd follows him. They think, feel and act in unison, and that makes everything they do seem right.

Is it not better to be stationary, submit to old restraints, and conform to venerated standards? It is not better to be governed by reason and virtue; by pride or habit even--by anything that is stable and respectable, especially when bequeathed us by our fathers, than to discard them all and plunge headlong into a sea of expediency, and move only as passion, pelf or caprice shall direct us?

Yet, we would not have our people be too stationary. We would not have them deny themselves the benefit of a wise progress. There are improvements in every department of life, and discoveries in every department of science and industry which they should avail themselves of. Our fathers had neither railroads, steamboats nor telegraph lines. That is no reason why we should deny ourselves their benefits. Nor should we refuse to introduce those political and legal reforms which have, in the lapse of time and in the change of circumstances, become necessary--as, for instance, the repeal of usury laws. We are a part of the world and must properly fill our relation to it. To refuse to move when it moves is as foolish as to attempt to move when it stands still.

The only encouraging feature in the gloomy prospect before us, is the fact that we are constrained to make a virtue of necessity, give up politics, and devote our attention to business. Necessity, not choice, has led us to this. Adversity sometimes teaches in a moment a useful lesson that years of prosperity would fail to inculcate. Our eyes are now, we hope, fully open to our past folly, and we will be wise if, in the future as well as at present, we shall eschew politics, or at least make it subordinate to our business interests.

By a singular antithesis, says the Richmond Whig, just as we, not voluntarily, however, have been brought down to our duty, are giving up politics and devoting ourselves to useful work, the North has lost its interest in the great objects of material improvement and development, and given up its whole mind and heart to politics. The North feels that it has, for the first time, got the Government in its keeping, and is afraid it will escape from its hands if its attention is averted for a moment. Every man, woman and child at the North has become a politician, if not a statesman, and they are as much tickled with that toy, the Government, as a child is with a rattle. They can think and talk of nothing else but the great power of the North, and their days and nights are spent in devising ways and means of making the South feel the weight of that power. Let them go on playing with their new pet, and let us work while they disport themselves. If we faithfully perform the duties that devolve upon us, we can in ten years not only repair all the ravages of war, but make long strides in the march of improvement. It is for this generation of Southern men to give impress to all future generations of the South, to create that impetus which shall bear them onward to a greater prosperity and power than we have ever had. Leaving the other Southern States to perform their part in the drama that is opening, let us in Virginia throw our whole hearts and souls into it.