"To escape danger or disaster to themselves, your Congress, and Executives, and judiciary, and State legislatures, shall not, with my consent, be allowed to drop the reins of government and leap from the seats of power and responsibility, and renounce the duty of protection and preservation to all within their care by the ignoring and stultifying and disqualifying plea of negation—'Non-intervention.' There are too many elements of discord in this country which require to be restrained by the most active and positive, but prudent intervention. These resolutions of Vermont, the tendency of which is either to drive one section of the States out of the Union, or to degrade and subjugate them in it, are an example. If anything can be worse than disunion to the United States, it would be the more dire alternative of degrading and subjugating any one State by forcing her submission to unequal laws and dishonorable conditions in the confederacy. The state or section of states thus subdued and humbled, would be unworthy of the union with other free republics, and such a union would be no longer what union now is. It should, then, be the watchful concern of all to maintain and support the honor, dignity, and equality of each; and equality alone can reciprocally maintain the strength of all. If first one and then another may be subdued, finally all but one will become subject to that one, central and consolidated. This should always combine the majority of States to support the weaker portion of the Union against the very appearance of oppression."
Such is the position of Gov. Wise on the slavery question. He is radical in his views, demanding the fullest protection from the courts and Congress for the protection of slavery. The faults as well as the virtues of Gov. Wise he carries openly in his face; if he is bold and imprudent, so he is frank and truthful. There is no deceit in him, and his political enemies know the worst when they know anything of his views or his course.
R. M. T. HUNTER.
Senator Hunter is a contrast, in almost every one of his traits of character, to Governor Wise. The Governor is voluble—he writes letters thirty columns long upon the condition of the country. Senator Hunter is reticent. The Governor is, say his enemies, rash. Mr. Hunter is cautious and prudent to a fault. Governor Wise, again, is a reformer in his way—Senator Hunter is set down as an "old fogy" in politics. Yet both are Democrats, and agree in essentials, as a matter of course.
Few members of the Senate enjoy to such an extent the respect of the entire body as Mr. Hunter. His manners, his bearing, his style of speaking, and his deportment in social circles, are such as to win him the esteem of all who know him, even in spite of political opposition.
In the Senate, he resembles some quiet unpretending farmer, who might have come up from a rural district, to sit in a State legislature. He dresses plain, is dignified without the least particle of pretension; speaks plainly, slowly, but clearly. Never tries to ride down a political opponent by declamation, but coolly argues the point of difference. During the most exciting debates he keeps his temper, and though in political matters, especially upon the slavery question, he is ultra-southern in his views, he is so watchful, so prudent, so mild in his speech, that he contrives to win the esteem of his northern associates, and to be very popular with them.
Mr. Hunter is a native of Essex County, Va., was liberally educated, and adopted the law as a profession. His first political experience was gained in the Virginian State Legislature, where he remained three years; but in 1837, he was elected to Congress as a member of the House of Representatives, where he remained four years. In 1845, he was reëlected to Congress, and was made Speaker of the Twenty-sixth Congress. In 1847, he was elected United States' Senator, where he still remains, and has been for years the able Chairman of the Finance Committee.
Mr. Hunter's political views are known to the country at large. He is a southern Democrat, with the views of a southern democratic politician—anti-tariff, of course—anti-homestead law—in the last Congress voting in the Senate against bringing up the bill for consideration. His views on Popular Sovereignty, we will give, shortly, from his own lips. He supported the Lecompton bill through thick and thin, though he did it as he does all his work, in a modest, quiet way, without bluster, or any attempt to intimidate.
In the non-intervention debate of March, 1839, Senator Hunter gave his views of the question under discussion, in the following language: