The Nashville Daily Union

A Secessionist on Aristocracy.

Our readers will find the following extract from the notorious De Bow's Review both amusing and instructive. Lovers of free government will form their own opinions as to its drift, while its sentiments will be heartily commended by some of our parvenu aristocracy. The extract is taken from the Review for September, 1860, page 268:

"We know hardly a family (in Virginia,) most of whose members do not occupy the same social position which their ancestors held two hundred years ago. Pride of pedigree is the greatest stimulant to exertion, energy, industry and economy. (!) Every man in America desires to be an aristocrat, for every man desires wealth, and wealth confers power and distinction, and makes the character an unmistakable aristocrat. Civilization would cease but for the universal desire of white men to become aristocrats."

This miserable ass ignores the aristocracy of virtue, and talent, and intelligence and recognizes no aristocracy but that of property--said property to consist of negroes and cotton. What an exalted soul the fellow has indeed. God deliver us from ever seeing that dark, ill-omened day when a few wealthy aristocrats shall trample under foot our countrymen. But again in the Review for May, 1860, we find on page 557 this astounding declaration:

"It is the wealth, brains and refinement of aristocracy, that formed, and now controls and preserves the freedom of our country. It only asks the masses for laborers and soldiers and in return gives them LIBERTY."

So all our vulgar mechanics, mud-sills, and "proletarians" will understand that they are to enjoy freedom not as an inherent and inalienable right, but as the gift which is kindly bestowed upon them, by a few thousand bloated and cheese-pated old asses, who own large cotton farms, and a few hundred splay-footed, blubber-lipped and woolly-headed negroes. Be thankful to your masters for their kindness, you surfs and vassals, and thank God for the blessings of an aristocracy.