Daily intelligencer. [volume] (Wheeling, Va. [W. Va.]) 1859-1865, 1860-10-15

State Committee, or to Thos. dornbrook,
Esq, Wheeling, Va.
We hope our friends in the lower
counties will avail themselves at once.
Gov. JOHN LEToHER is a living vertical
ton of tho truth of the old adage which
teaches that an apostnte is always the most
interruptions of zealots. Hemadca speech
from the Mcclure House balcony in this
city, on Friday night last, that was dis
grace to him as man, doubly disgraceful
to him as the chief officer of the State,
and which strips him bare of any genuine
claim to patriotic craftsmanship. He
showed himself to be a partisan who
would unscrupulously make use of his
official position to fan social discord and
in1amc.an internecine collision. We be-
lieve him to be every inch a narrow mind
ed agitator, who, to attain his present po-
sition, repudlated his political record, and
who, in the hope of a further advance
ment to the place held by Senator Mason,
would say anything or do anything, how
ever dangerous or reasonable, that would
propitiate tho ultraism of the Eastern
part of the State, and make them obliYious
of his Ruffner pamphlet sentiments. Those
sentiments we have pretty extensively ven
tiloted within the last year or two, but in
view of his reasonable advice to his fell
low citizens here last Friday night, that
they should rally under the flag of State
rebellion,,to Federal authority, and his cheap
threat to make his executive power felt on
portion of his fellow citizens for their
political sentiments, makes it fitting
time to inquire upon what meat John
Letcher has fed, that has suddenly made
him such vengeful orthodoxist. In lS47
this same John Lctcher was just about
in his prime mentally, and at that time
rejoicing in the fullness of all the powers
that nature ever gave him, he published
to the world sentiments like these. See
how cribbed and confined was his over
flowing State pride and patriotism then:
Said he:
FELLOW CITIZENS: Now is the time
when W., We Of West Virginia should review
- lilove Hi'eweiIare or ourselves and our pos
terlty Three years hence another census
pteted. Then it will appear how large n
minority we are of the citizens of this
commonwealth, and how unjust it is that
our fellow citizens of East Virginia, being
minority of the people, should be able.
by means of their majority in the lcgisIa
ture, to govern both East and West for
their own advantage. You have striven
IN vain to get this inequality of represent
!at!on rectihed. The same legislative ma
Jority has used the power of which we
complain, to make all our complaints
Irultless, and to retain the ascendencv
now when they represent n minority of
the people, which they secured to them
selves eighteen years ago, while they vet
represented the majority.
Such, men of Wheeling, was the wav
John Letcher talked to Eastern Virginia
in the year 1s47, when he was in the prime
of his mind and most likely in the zenith
OF whatever political honesty he ever had.
But what we have quoted is not all, nor
yet the worst he said in that year.
He said, also, that
There is, long has been, in different
parts OF Virginia, every degree of differ
ence, from the least to the greatest, he
tween the slaveholding and non-slavehold-
ing interests of the people. In several
parts the slaves are two or three times as
numerous as the whites, and the slave
holding interests oycrrules and absorbs
everything.
But again, and still worse, he said this:
Some Virginia politicians proudly-yes.
proudly, fellow citizens-calI our old com.
monwealth, the Mother of States. These
enlightened patriots might pay her IL still
17gneg compliment, by calling her the
Grandmother of States. For our part we
are grleved and mortified, to think of the
lean, haggard condition of our venerable
mother. Her black children have sucked
her so dry, that now, for long time past.
sac has not milk enough for her offspring,
either white or black.
x The slave adds nothing to the
moral and physical strength of the coun-
try, and if his labor be profitless, of course
he IS nuisance, and the sooner we rid
ourselves of him the better.
These are only portion of the senti-
ments with which the Ruffner pamphlet
"bounds. The whole thing is studded.
from beginning to end, with just such talk.
Contrast them with the "breathing out of
slaughter" which the same man exhaled
through his mouth and his nostrils on the
hcLure House balcony, Friday night.
Amt he beautiful pink of orthodoxy to
talk about taking people out here in hands
for their political opinionsI All we have
got to say is that we wish him ioy in his
labors. We suppose we will be made
duly aware when he commences.
A DISPATCH from Washington states that
the Breckinridge men there are now con-
hdently claiming Texas, Arkansas, Louisi-
ana, Mississippi, Alabama, South Carroll
ma Florida and Delaware. OF other slave