But those tobacco lords of Virginia, besides making large
fortunes in a few years, were the absolute, irresponsible masters of a
submissive race. And when these two potent causes of effeminacy and
pride had worked out their proper result in the character of the
masters, then, behold! their resources fail. Vicious agriculture
exhausts the soil, false political economy prevents the existence of a
middle class, and the presence of slaves repels emigration. Proud,
ignorant, indolent, dissolute, and in debt, the dominant families, one
after another, passed away, attesting to the last, by an occasional
vigorous shoot, the original virtue of the stock. All this poor John
Randolph represented and was.
Virginia remains. Better men will live in it than have ever yet lived
there; but it will not be in this century, and possibly not in the
next. It cannot be that so fair a province will not be one day
inhabited by a race of men who will work according to the laws of
nature, and whom, therefore, the laws of nature will co-operate with
and preserve. How superior will such Virginians be to what Dr.
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