NATIONAL POLITICS.

A SPEECH MADE AT THE WHIG CONVENTION OF MASSACHUSETTS, IN THE TREMONT TEMPLE, BOSTON, SEPTEMBER 3, 1856.

I THANK you, fellow-citizens and fellow-Whigs of Massachusetts, for the honor of presiding over this convention. Had I felt at liberty to consult only my own convenience, or even to yield to the pressure of any ordinary engagements, still more, had I been capable of being controlled by any mere considerations of personal policy, I should not have been within the reach of such a distinction. I should have been elsewhere today. But there are times when it hardly becomes a good citizen to shrink from any position to which he may be called by those with whom he agrees in regard to public affairs. There are times when no man who has honest, deliberate, and decided views in reference to the condition of his country, should hold back from declaring them distinctly and boldly. There are times, and this is eminently one of those times, when, as the great Roman orator said, it should be written on every man's forehead, what he thinks of the republic.

You have called me to the chair, indeed, gentlemen, as one whose opinions are not altogether unknown. Though I have thus far adhered to my intention of giving no absolute committals or irrevocable pledges, and though I do not mean to be so bound by any party ties as to prevent me from acting at any time according to my sincere individual convictions, I have yet more than once indicated the general views and the particular preferences which I entertain, in regard to the approaching election, in terms which could not have been misunderstood.

You will hardly excuse me, however, from complying with the custom of these conventions, by availing myself of this position,

and of this opportunity, to give a somewhat fuller and more formal expression of opinion in relation to the momentous issues now before the people of the United States.

We have come together as Massachusetts Whigs, who have not yet seen our way clear to the merging of our old organization in that of any of the other parties, old or new, which have attracted so many of those with whom we have formerly been associated. We have come together under the same old flag which has borne the battle and the breeze for a quarter of a century past, and which during so long a portion of that period has floated in triumph over our beloved Commonwealth. We lift it up afresh to-day, with the bright particular star of our own State on one side, and with nothing less than all the stars of the Union on the other, and rally as proudly beneath its folds, now that it seems to be committed to the keeping of hardly more than a respectable color-guard, as when it was the cherished ensign of an army of seventy thousand voters. We have assembled in a full consciousness of our own comparative weakness, and not without renewed emotions of regret, that the noble old party which so long secured a prosperous and honorable administration to our State, and which so long furnished a bright succession of patriotic and powerful leaders to the councils of the nation, should have been deprived of its supremacy and shorn of its strength, at a moment when more than ever before its services were needed both to the Commonwealth and the whole country.

But we come together, gentlemen, I am sure, in no spirit of animosity or bitterness towards anybody. We come for no purposes of petty proscription or revenge. We come neither to read anybody out of our ranks who is disposed to remain there, nor yet to calumniate or censure any one who has already left us.

For myself, I desire, in what I may have to say this morning, to speak both of the past and of the present in a tone of entire moderation and forbearance. The condition of our country is too serious to be treated of in violent or intemperate language. Mutual criminations and invectives have already been the cause of one full half of all the evils under which we are suffering, and they are doing nothing, nothing whatever, towards relieving us

from the pressure of the other half. It would be as easy for me, perhaps, as it is for others, to pander to the ultraisms and extravagances of the hour, and I might gain a fresh popularity in some quarters by doing so. But if discord is to catch and kindle throughout the land, if the disorders which are now limited and local are to spread and swell until they shall have attained to the full height and fearful proportions of civil war, I pray Heaven that I, for one, may have given no just occasion for such a stricture as that of Dr. Johnson upon Junius,-"Finding sedition in the ascendant, he has been able to advance it; finding the nation combustible, he has been able to inflame it." Rather let my ability to say any thing, or my courage to do any thing, be for ever questioned or denied, than that I should manifest either courage or ability at the expense of the national peace or the national Union.

No, gentlemen, if I can pour no oil upon the waters, I will, at least, add no fuel to the flames; and I do not intend, if I can help it, that a single harsh word or reproachful imputation shall escape my lips to-day, in relation either to any of the candidates before the country, or to any of those by whom they are respectively supported. I see on all sides those whom I respect, those whom I love, those with whom I have so long been proud to be associated in public life, and with whom I am still proud to be associated in private life, ranging themselves under banners widely differing from each other, and not less widely differing from that to which, whether in prosperous or adverse fortune, I still cling. They are following, I know, their own well-considered and conscientious convictions of duty, and far be it from any of us to impeach their motives or question their sincerity. Not even the unjust and ungenerous censures which have so often been cast on my own adherence, now and heretofore, to the dictates of my deliberate judgment, shall tempt me to indulge in any thing of retaliation or retort. The day will assuredly come, when we shall be found acting together again with some of them, perhaps with all of them; - and while I recognize the policy of the old maxim, that we should deal even with our friends as with those who may one day be our enemies, I like still better the higher and nobler principle of dealing

with our enemies, as with those who may one day become our friends.

And now, gentlemen, let me turn for a few moments, and in this spirit, to the immediate questions we are assembled to consider. For the first time since its formation, the Whig party of the State and nation is called upon to take the field, if it takes the field at all, not so much as an independent phalanx, to advance any distinct objects, and promote the success of any distinct candidates of its own,-it acknowledges itself too feeble to attempt that, but as an auxiliary force, to advance the cause and sustain the candidates of that one of the three other parties of the country which shall most nearly approve itself to our best judgment. We are here for no purposes of ratification or of coalition, in any just sense of those terms,-nor, indeed, in any sense. But if I may be allowed to borrow an illustration from scenes suggested to me by a morning's sail from Nahant, I would liken our party at this moment to one of those loaded cars which are so often seen dragged from one side to the other of some inland steamer, to turn the scale at a critical moment of its navigation, and to give it a better chance of passing safely through some intricate channel, or along some perilous shore. We may not be able to furnish a hand of our own for the helm; we may not even be able to supply any great amount of propelling power to the keel; - but we may throw our weight in a direction to keep the ship of state more steadily and safely on its course, and to prevent it from dashing upon the breakers, or even from sliding upon the banks. The great want of that gallant bark at this moment is well-adjusted ballast, and if we shall do something towards supplying that want, we shall have deserved well of our country.

And what is the question which ought to present itself first and foremost to our careful and conscientious consideration in the discharge of this humble but most important service?

It is not in my judgment, gentlemen, a question of party platforms. No honest man can have watched the course of politics for half-a-dozen years without realizing that the resolutions of conventions are slippery things for anybody to stand upon, and treacherous things for the people to trust to. We all know,

for we all have seen, how phrases may be artfully cooked up so as to convey a great deal more, or a great deal less, than they are really intended to mean, and so as to be one thing at Cincinnati or Philadelphia, and another thing at Boston, Charleston, or New Orleans. The great art of modern political platform-making seems to be the art of suppression, equivocation, and "paltering in a double sense;" as if language had really been invented only to conceal the meaning of those who employ it. And no man has uttered a juster sentiment than that eminent leader of the Temperance cause, Mr. Delavan of Albany, in his admirable speech in favor of Mr. Fillmore, when he declared that it was the man, and not the platform, that he felt bound to regard.

But the question, in my judgment, is not one of men, or of candidates, merely. There is not one of the candidates now before the country of whom I would utter an unkind or disparaging word, and I rejoice that out of all the confusion and collision of the times has come at least one good result,—that of compelling all parties to nominate for the great offices of the Republic, men of unexceptionable private character, and of more than ordinary ability and endowments. If Mr. Buchanan has thought it necessary to transform himself into a platform, for the purposes of the campaign, I doubt not he will be seen turning back again into a man, and an able and worthy man, after it is over. For Mr. Fremont I entertain nothing but respect and esteem. Our seats were next to each other during his brief term in the Senate of the United States, and I was a witness to his intelligent and faithful service. Our homes in Washington were within a biscuit's throw of each other for a much longer period, and I can bear the most cordial testimony to the attractions and accomplishments of more than one of those beneath his roof. His scientific attainments and explorations have reflected the highest credit on his country as well as on himself,- though I do confess that a certain Royal Geographical Medal, which was so worthily bestowed upon him, has a somewhat ominous ring in my ears just now, in connection with the peculiar composition and character of the party of which he is the chosen Representative. I had rather have geographical accomplishments displayed in any other sphere whatever, than in running out the boundary lines of political parties.