Staunton Vindicator

The change throughout the country, wrought by the war, is greater than many at first suppose. It is not confined to the great labor system of the South, which was wont to furnish sufficient materials to keep the vast mills and factories of the world in motion, but embraces within it a change of the prospects of the whole country. In days gone by the Southern planter made not only a sufficiency for the support of his laborers and dependants, but had an abundant surplus to enable him to lead a comfortable and even luxurious life. What cared he then to make his plantation self-sustaining when his income was sufficient to supply his every need without it! To-day and henceforth the tables are turned. Economy, unknown in the South in former times, is now to be the great polar star of her pecuniary advancement. She is no longer able to purchase, as she was accustomed, her live stock, cereals, provisions, &c., from the great North West, but must needs, in her poverty raise these cereals and breed our own cattle. In like manner, for want of the great staple to exchange for manufactures, she must act to work and finally do her own manufacturing. This she is impelled to by another incentive, the excessive duties on foreign manufactures. With a free trade system she would have continued as formerly to till the soil, and, with the rich harvests she would reap, been content to look on at New England and the outer world in possession of the monopoly of manufactures. But with the present duties, not likely to be decreased, she can illy afford to pay the demands of New England monopoly, and will, as we said, be compelled to turn her attention more particularly to manufacturing.--What she has accomplished, already, gives evident promise, in the future, of her independence of the rest of the world in this respect. With the goods now upon her it can be delayed to no distant day.

The North West must ultimately be effected as is the South. No longer a Southern market for her productions, she will likewise be unable to raise the means to go abroad for her manufactures, and will in turn be driven to the necessity of manufacturing to a greater extent than heretofore.

New England is also bound to feel this changes as the Southern and Western demand for her manufactures grows less. Reveling in wealth, accumulated by a long and well protected monopoly, she feels but slightly, as yet, the running of her mills and factories on half and quarter time. It is however but the "beginning of the end." The handwriting is on her walls. The sceptre is slowly but surely departing from her. Another year, and we fear that half and quarter time will not be all. Many of her factories will cease operation and where was but just now the busy hum of industry will be the quiet of a "deserted village." We do not write as we would wish, concerning that domineering and self-laudatory section of the Union, but as we seem to see the finger of fate unerringly pointing. We would not curse her with such a fate as seems to us portending, but we can but feel that when all was quiet -- when each section was but doing its allotted portion for the advancement of the whole country, of which she was getting the lion's share, New England was not content, but stirred up the cause of strife which has terminated in the present unhappy condition of the country, and which will eventuate in her own impoverishment. If such be her fate, who will say the punishment is undeserved? Since she sowed the whirlwind must she not, in justice, reap the storm?

We published in our last issue the new plan of reconstruction which was said to have met with favor from President Johnson, the Northern Democracy, Conservative Republicans and a number of prominent Southern gentlemen, among them the Governors of several Southern States. We read it hastily and published it merely for the information of ourselves. We have since re-read it several times and we can scarcely see any difference between the new plan proposed Constitutional Amendment of Congress, which the Southern State Legislatures, as far as they have acted upon it, have with a great degree of unanimity refused to ratify. The difference between it and the new plan is that the latter does away with the disability clause of the former. This was one of the most objectionable feature. These have been discussed and the mind of the South fully made up on the subject. The new plan then comes up as nearly as possible to the proposed amendment, not to be one of the same. If we have good reasons to refuse to offer the other as a plan of re-construction on our part. Leaving aside the merits (as far as we are concerned,) of the new plan, it is not likely to meet with the consent of those who hold the balance of power in Congress. They meet it with decision, as a step towards the Republican demands, but not quite far enough. If we intend to maintain our Constitutional stand points and demand our rights in the Union as Constitutional rights, and failing to get them, as we have thus far, to quietly await the time when fanaticism shall be borne down by the power of reason and justice, then it is a step too far for even representative Southern men to have gone and will not be sanctioned by the masses. But if the Union, at the sacrifice of the principles on which it was established, and for the sake of union alone, in what we must obtain, with the present feeling of the Northern people, we have truly made but a feeble step and must, if we would succeed, swallow all the nauseating draughts the fanatical quacks prepare, and ask no questions.

We hardly think the Southern people are ready for such panaceas for union, whether prepared by Northern or Southern doctors, and believe that all such, not in strict accord with the Constitution, will, as they should meet the fate of the kindred Constitutional Amendment.