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A NICE DISTINCTION. - The Richmond Enquirer claims for Virginia the character and position of a conservative peace-maker, standing politically and geographically midway between the extremists of the North and the South, and serving as a barrier to prevent a hostile meeting of two belligerent forces. We are glad to see the leading organ of Virginian opinion laying claim to this distinction as a heretofore the same paper has decidedly ranged itself in the ranks of the extreme South. But the Enquirer still shows a leaning towards the extremists of the South, which does not promise well for the independence and impartiality of its position. It says:
“The State of Virginia, standing between the two extremes, the unprincipled traitors of the North, on the one hand, and the furious, fire-eating malcontents of the Slaveholding States on the other, operates in her influence as a calm conservator and mediator between tow violent and dangerous currents of public sentiment.”
The discontented party of the North are “unprincipled traitors” in the view of the Enquirer, but the furious fire-eating disunionists of the Slave States are only “malcontents.” But it is something gained for the Virginia organ to confess even that the malcontents of the Slave States may possibly be in the wrong.