Anglo-Saxon blood. It was certainly true, from the character and
abilities of her public men, in her colonial condition and in the
earlier days of the republic, she had a right to assume a superiority;
but this, I fancy, was more the result of her peculiar institutions
than of any superiority of race or greater purity of blood. I am far,
however, from underrating the influence of blood. That there are
species of the same race superior in mental as well as in physical
formation is certainly true. The peculiar organization of the brain,
its fineness of texture in some, distinguish them as mentally superior
to others, as the greater development of bone and muscle marks the
superiority of physical power. Very frequently this difference is seen
in brothers, and sometimes in families of the same parents--the males
in some usurping all the mental acumen, and in others the females. Why
this is so, I cannot stop to speculate.

Virginia, in her many divisions of territory, was granted to the
younger sons of the nobility and gentry of England. They came with the
peculiar habits of their class, and located upon these grants,
bringing with them as colonists their dependants in England, and
retaining here all the peculiarities of caste. The former were the
governing class at home, and asserted the privilege here; the latter
were content that it should be so. In the formation of the first
constitution for Virginia, the great feature of a landed aristocracy
was fully recognized in the organic law. The suffragist was the landed
proprietor, and in every county where his possessions were this right
attached. They recognized landed property as the basis of government,
and demanded the right for it of choosing the lawmakers and the
executors of the law. All power, and very nearly all of the wealth of
the State, was in the hands of the landlords, and these selected from
their own class or caste the men who were to conduct the government.