this collect of the new school, there is nothing new. There is nothing in it that all the Whigs of the Northern and Middle States may not adopt. Gentlemen, it is well known that there is nothing in this Buffalo platform which, in general, does not meet the approbation of all the Whigs of the Middle and Northern States. Suppose, now, that all of us who are Whigs should go and join the Free Soil party, what would be the result? Why, so far, nothing would happen, but that the Whig party would have changed its name. That would be all. Instead of being the Whig party, it would be the Free-Soil party. We should be all there, exactly upon the same principles upon which we have always stood." "Now, contrast this full, explicit, comprehensive, and apparently ingenuous subscription and adhesion to all the doctrines and articles of the Buffalo platform, in 1848, with the 7th of March speech in 1850, and with all that has since followed it from the same source." Yes, contrast it, and find, if you can, a single principle in the one, that is contradicted in the other. But Mr. Horace Mana is too thick-headed to understand, or too fanatical to acknowledge, (he may take which horn he pleases,) the difference between principles and measures,-that while these change, those remain. The truth is, Mr. Webster's career, "more forcibly than that of any other statesman of the time, illustrates the saying that, in applying principles to the changing affairs of life, the man who is true to his idea must often submit to the risk of being deemed inconsistent in his measures." Try Mr. Webster by the most rigid test, and see if you can detect, during the whole course of a long public life, a single deviation from principle, and if you cannot, then hold your tongues about apostasy, for very shame. Apostasy, forsooth! The South knew better. They knew that Mr. Webster's hostility to the extension of slave territory was as uncompromising as ever, and it was on that M account, and that only, that while they respected the man, they could not give him their vote in Convention, (not even in the way of compliment when it became certain he could not be nominated,) lest they should be charged with endorsing his doctrine on that point. I regret that it was so: I regret that his determination was so unalterable, for I believe most fully that the extension of slave territory will be for the benefit of the blacks as well as the whites, and that the best interests of the country demand it, as soon as it can be honorably brought about. But that Mr. Webster did not believe it, there can be no doubt, for if there is any one thing that is certain, it is that the principles of the “Buffalo Platform," were those of his whole public career. And yet, in the face of all this, Mr. Horace Mann characterizes the doctrines of the 7th of March speech as "apostate doctrines," "cold, relentless, and blaspheming," and Mr. Whittier, in reference to that same speech, wrote the following: ICHABOD. So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn Which once he wore! The glory from his gray hairs gone Revile him not-the Tempter hath A snare for all ; And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath, Befit his fall! Oh! dumb be passion's stormy rage, When he who might Have lighted up and led his age, Scorn! would the angels laugh, to mark Fiend-goaded down the endless dark, From hope and heaven! "Blistered be thy tongue For such a wish! He was not born to shame! Upon his brow shame is ashamed to sit! For 'tis a throne where honor might be crowned But even had the above lines been as true as they are poetical, Mr. Whittier should have been the last person to give utterance to them, as my readers will probably admit, when they read the following, addressed by him some years. ago to the Hon. Henry Clay, a slaveholder, and one, moreover, who stood side by side with Mr. Webster, on the "Compromise Measures :" Not fallen! No! as well the tall And pillared Alleghany fall! As well Ohio's giant tide! Roll backward on its mighty track As he, Columbia's hope and pride, The slandered and the sorely tried, In his triumphant course turn back.. He is not fallen! Seek to bind The chainless and unbidden wind, But deem not that the mighty mind He is not fallen! Every breeze A praise which none but patriots hear. Star of the West! A million eyes Before his waning light grows dim; Of meteors dazzling to betray, All hail! the hour is hastening on, The angel-guarded Triad came ; The slanderer shall be silent then, His spell shall have the mind of men, The Western Patriot's future fame. Such were formerly Mr. Whittier's feelings towards a leading slave-holder. Yet he was then as much a Quaker as he is now; but he was not then an abolitionist, in any other sense than that in which Daniel Webster always was one; and, had his feelings at that time remained the same to 1850, he would have cut off his right hand sooner than have written the lines first above quoted. Sed tempora mutantur ; Twenty years have made a wonderful change in him and his associates. He and nine-tenths, ay, ninety-nine-hundredths, of those who act with him, were then (those of them, I mean, who were old enough to have an opinion,) as bitterly opposed to Garrison as the sturdiest conservative Whig, or Hunker Democrat, of them all, as Garrison, himself, could testify. But time does not alter truth, and Mr. Whittier must, therefore, excuse me, if, when he changes, I refuse to veer and turn" with him. NOTE 13.-EXTENSION OF SLAVE TERRITORY. I have already remarked in the preceding Note, that I most fully believe that the extension of slave territory will be for the benefit of the blacks as well as the whites, and that the best interests of the country demand it, as soon as it can be honorably brought about; and I am happy to believe that I can find plenty to agree with me "all over our land." Certainly, there has been a wonderful change in men's minds on this subject within the last ten years, and still more within the last fifty. A great deal of superfluous evidence has lately been brought forward by Free-Soil |