6 government, has long been apparent. * That such was their design, was well known before divers of them admitted it in print. Hence their assumption of feudal descent, and the desire to ape the aristocracy of the dark ages which has cropped out on divers occasions in a most ludicrous manner. Their efforts in this direction are truly ridiculous. Men bearing such vulgar Saxon names as Cobb, Wise, Spratt, Keitt, Toombs, Bragg, Johns(t)on, (with or without the “ t,”) and Yancey, presume strongly on the ignorance of mankind when they pretend that they are of the Norman race. Only imagine a Norman bearing such a name as Magruder I It would be easier for Smith, Brown, Jones, and Robinson to prove by their names, undisguised by a surplus letter, a mediseval lineage. Suchj however, are the boasted and boastful Normans of secessia. Among them are to be found names which are not merely commonplace, as are the foregoing, or, as is the name Mason, but which, so far from being Norman or aristocratic, are intensely vulgar, and possess a signification indicative of the most humble and degraded Saxon origin. A friend suggests that it is easier to believe that the ancestors of such men as Wigfall, Pickens and Letcher, were among the barbers, petty thieves, and pimps, who in part constituted the camp-followers of the knights of old than that those now known by such appellations are of feudal descent. Such names have no place in the heraldic records of any race. All of the names cited, when we consider the arrogance of their owners, are bad enough, but the two last are really very impressive as to what must have been the moral status of the first of the ancestors of Governors Pickens and Letcher who were dubbed with them. Truly when • we bear in mind that South Carolina took the initiative in robbing the United States government, and her citizens lead off in confiscating northern debts, and that Virginia was the only one of the colonies that was.for a time the Botany Bay of England, it does seem most remarkable that their secession chief magistrates should be the possessors. of such appropriate names. * “ Democracy, in its original philosophical sense, is, indeed, incompatible with slavery, and the whole system of Southern society.”—Mr. Garnett of Virginia, in his letter to Mr. Trescott of South Carolina.
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