GOVERNOR WISE OF EMIGRATION TO VIRGINIA.- The Richmond Enquirer publishes an authorized denial of a current rumor, that Gov. WISE favors the plan of the “Homestead Aid Society,”-to purchase large tracts of land, and settle free laborers upon them. It is confident that “he that reprobates the formation or organized societies whose object is immediately or remotely to interfere with, or to weaken or destroy our slave institutions.” But it proceeds to say that
“If emigrants come into this State, with lawful intent, to settle our waste places, to increase our population and to develop our resources, he would welcome them with all his hear. Every lover of the State must desire to see her population increased, and when honest, hard-working, energetic laborers come among us they will be greeted and cheered. Let the agriculturist, the mechanic, the manufacturer with or without capital come, with a determination to stand by our institutions, sustain our laws, and share our fortunes for weal or woe, and the Governor and every good citizen will cherish and sustain them.”
This is sensible. If the officials, the Press, and the people of Virginia will act steadily and practically upon this principle for twenty-five years, the Old Dominion will no longer decline in all the elements of natural strength and respectability, but will resume its proper position as a prosperous, powerful and advancing State. But its people must not permit politicians to delude them any longer with the bugbear of Abolition. If the introduction of free labor should weaken Slavery, and finally supplant it, this can only be because it is more profitable. And what is there in the “institution of Slavery which should render it desirable to perpetuate at a heavy loss? If the people of Virginia refuse to be hoodwinked and humbugged by their political leaders, take their own affairs into their own hands, cease blindly to worship the institution of negroes, develop their material resources, invite, encourage, and secure a steady stream of immigrants into their State, and thus add constantly to the labor which is the strength of every State, they will soon cease to care anything about Slavery, and become perfectly content to let it take care of itself. The sooner they set about the experiment the better for them. Why will not Governor WISE set this ball in motion?
