cannot vote to separate Virginia from the United States, if they retain such opinions, must leave the State.  We thank him for teaching us that word.  When the tables are turned, it will form a valuable theme for his private meditation.  The unconditional Union men, who are of and for their country against all comers, who neither commit treason openly nor disguise their cowardly treachery under the shallow cover of neutrality, are to wield the power of their respective States, and to be the only recognized inhabitants.  All others must submit or fly.  If the Governor and Legislature of Virginia have renounced their allegiance to the United States, and undertaken to establish a foreign jurisdiction in a portion of our territory, their relation to that State becomes substantially the same as if they had gone on board a British fleet in the Chesapeake, or enlisted under the standard of an invading army.  They have abdicated their offices, which thereby become vacant.  It was for “having endeavored to subvert the constitution of the kingdom by breaking the original contract between king and people, violated the fundamental laws, and having withdrawn himself out of the kingdom,” that James II. was declared by the House of Commons to have abdicated the government.  Would it have been less an abdication, if he had remained within the realm, and attempted to hold it as the viceroy of France?  When, in June, 1775, Governor Dunmore and his Council took refuge on board a British man-of-war, the Virginians of that day proceeded to meet in convention, and provide new officers to manage the affairs of their State.  Let this historical precedent be followed now.  Wherever, in either of the States which the rebels have sought to appropriate, the loyal citizens can find a spot in which they can meet in safety, let them meet by their delegates in convention, and adopt the necessary measures to elect new officers under their present constitutions.  The only irregularity will be what results from the fact that treason in such high places and on so large a scale was not contemplated, nor was a remedy furnished for it, in their frame of government.  It is merely a case not provided for, and the omission must be supplied in the most practicable way.  The new organization should and undoubtedly would be recognized by the National Government, and by the other States, as, de facto and de jure, the State.  It was settled in the Rhode Island case, under Tyler’s administration, that, where different portions of the people claim to hold and exercise the powers of a State government, it presents a political question which the National Executive and Congress must decide; and that judicial recognition must follow and conform to the political decision.