WHIG PREDICTIONS AND WHIG POLICY.

A SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE STATE CONVENTION OF THE WHIGS OF MASSACHUSETTS, IN FANEUIL HALL, SEPTEMBER 23, 1846.

I SHOULD have preferred on many accounts, Mr. President, to remain still longer a listener on this occasion, and to postpone until a later hour, if not altogether, any remarks of my own. But I cannot hesitate to respond, without further delay, to the unequivocal and cordial summons which has now been made. upon me. Indeed, Sir, I am proud to participate, at any time, and in ever so humble a way, in the proceedings of such a meeting as I see before me. The mere presence at it, to those who have been so lately and so long confined to far other company, is a privilege which you and I, at least, know how to appreciate. I rejoice to see once more the faces of so many true-hearted Whigs of Massachusetts;-faces, not a few of which have been familiar to me in other years, and in other fields of public or political service; - faces, all of which I may greet as the faces of friends, if there be any thing of truth in the saying of the great Roman orator, that one of the strongest bonds of human friendship is, "to think alike concerning the Republic."

*

Nor, Sir, can I find it in my heart to regret that this Convention is assembled here, in this city, covered with memorials of the patriotism of the fathers, and of the philanthropy and munificence of their sons; and in this hall, devoted, from the first, to human liberty, and whose echoes are ever true to the cause to which it was consecrated. And not of liberty alone, much less.

* Hon. Charles Hudson was in the Chair, having just returned with Mr. Winthrop from a protracted session of Congress.

of Boston alone, or of Massachusetts alone, do these venerated columns, or yonder votive canvas, speak to us, but of "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable."

We meet this day, Mr. President and Gentlemen, under circumstances of more than ordinary interest. Rarely, if ever, have so many momentous issues been presented at once to our consideration. When we were assembled in this hall last year, the administration, against whose accession to power we had so vigorously but so vainly struggled, had but just entered on the threshold of their career. Their principles and purposes had only found expression on paper or in words, in the resolutions of some Baltimore convention, in the manifestoes of some mass meeting, or in the hardly more dignified phrases of an inaugural message. We had, then, some reason, or at least some room, for hoping, that their practice might fall short of their professions; that their bite might be less bad than their bark; that they might not be quite willing, or if willing, not quite able, to carry out to their full consummation the plans they had so boldly avowed.

A year of action has since ensued; a year of busy, earnest, varied, crowded, action. Their whole policy has now been practically disclosed and developed. There is scarcely a subject in the whole wide field of national legislation, which has failed to receive the impression, the deep and strong impression, of their ruling hand. Questions foreign and questions domestic, questions of currency and questions of commerce, questions moral and questions material, questions of peace and questions of war, questions of labor and questions of liberty, have been drawn, with startling rapidity, within the sphere of their deliberation, and have received the unequivocal stamp of their decision.

Their acts are now before us. We now know them by their fruits. And it well becomes us to examine those fruits, and to see for whom they are meat, and for whom they are poison.

In pursuing such an examination ever so cursorily, Mr. President, no man who hears me can fail to be struck with the complete coincidence which is found, between the predictions which were pronounced by the Whig presses and the Whig speakers, two years ago, as to the consequences of Mr. Polk's election to

the Presidency, and the facts as they have now occurred. A great poet tells us of

"Some juggling fiend, who never spoke before,

But cries, 'I warned thee,' when the deed is o'er."

Not such are the cries, "we warned you," "we warned you," which the Whigs are now everywhere ringing through the land. In the columns of a hundred newspapers, at the corners of a hundred streets, the precise results which are now before us and upon us, were read or heard two years ago, in the language of prophecy, but, as it now appears, with the literal exactness of history. We may, indeed, say with him of old, not a little of whose patience we are called upon to exercise, "the things which we greatly feared are come upon us, and that which we were afraid of is come unto us."

وو

I know, Mr. President, of but a single catastrophe, which was foreboded as the consequence of the defeat of our party at the last Presidential election, which has been in any degree averted. I mean, a war with Great Britain for the Territory of Oregon. And certainly, certainly, I do not underrate the importance of this exception to the general assertion I have made. Nor would I withhold from the administration any measure of credit, which it may deserve, for having saved the country from so unspeakable a calamity. But what degree of credit does it deserve? Who can say, this day, upon his conscience, that it was by the statesmanship, by the moderation, by the wisdom, by the civilized policy and Christian principle of the President, or his cabinet, or the general mass of his supporters, that this result was accomplished? Who, on the other hand, can forget the intemperate and braggart counsels, which brought the two countries to the perilous edge of such a war as never raged before, and which were only restrained, (under God,) by the patriotic firmness and independence of half a dozen of the nominal friends of the administration, seconded and sustained by the great body of the Whigs in Congress? Yes, Sir, the Whigs in Congress, and more particularly the Whigs of the Senate, with our own everhonored and illustrious Daniel Webster in their front ranks, may claim the true glory of having saved the peace of the country and of the world, in this case; and of having brought

the administration to the necessity, (I will not call it the humiliating necessity, there is nothing humiliating in abandoning a false course, it is the highest honor, rather, to any man or any party,) of submitting to an arrangement, to which it had rashly and recklessly declared that it never would submit!

Peace, lasting, and, I hope, eternal peace, between the United States and Great Britain, by the settlement of the only remaining disputed boundary between them, that very peace, which Shakspeare would seem to have prefigured, when he said, "Our peace shall stand as firm as Rocky Mountains," - this has been secured to us; and, for this, the Whigs in Congress, in a hopeless minority though they seemed, may claim no second or subordinate share of distinction. Had they looked only to party ends; had they been willing to embroil the country, for the pur pose of embarrassing the administration; had they acted in the spirit, which so many of their adversaries have more than once exhibited in regard to the Ashburton Treaty, I honestly believe that war would have been as inevitable, even as General Cass so often pronounced it. But the policy of the Whigs was Peace; And I may peace in this case, and peace in every other case. add, that they would have preserved it in every other case, also, had it ever depended on their voices or on their votes.

But, with this one exception, the whole catalogue of disastrous consequences, predicted from the election of Mr. Polk, has been fulfilled to the letter.

1. The Sub-Treasury scheme, upon which the people of this country passed sentence of condemnation, in tones so emphatic and unequivocal, in 1840, has been reëstablished. That credit system, upon which the young and enterprising must ever depend so much for getting a start in life, and which, under wholesome regulations, is of incalculable importance to the honest industry of the people, has again been placed under the ban of the national government. From this day forth, every bank-note in the land, without discrimination between the redeemable and the irredeemable, bears a government protest on its face. It may be good enough for the people, but it is not good enough for the office-holders. A new divorce has been proclaimed between the people and the government, and the

"Let

decree does not contain even an allowance for alimony. the government take care of itself, and let the people take care of themselves," is again practically avowed as the maxim of a self-styled Democratic administration.

It is true, that the administration has, at present, the hardest part of this bargain. It is clear that the government has not yet made much headway in taking care of number one, upon this hard money principle. Not only has the Sub-Treasury system been again ushered into existence under the salute of an issue of ten millions of treasury notes, but the Executive has notoriously been at work in manufacturing another variety of paper money, through the medium of paymasters' drafts, which is a deliberate and intentional fraud upon the whole design and object of the act. But the principle is none the better, whatever the practice may be. This government was not made to take care of itself alone; and as to the people, the best and only way in which they can take care of themselves as I trust they will soon understand and signify is by placing always in offices of authority and trust, men who will watch over their interests, provide for their wants, regulate their commerce, protect their labor, and carry out those great ends of common defence and general welfare, for which the Constitution was at first created.

2. In fit companionship with this act, may be placed the refusal of the administration, through a most odious exercise of the veto power, to coöperate with large majorities of Congress, in making provision for removing obstructions and improving channels in the various harbors and rivers of the Union. We of Massachusetts, had a particular interest in the bill which was thus wantonly defeated. The harbor, on whose borders we are at this moment assembled, was deprived, by the imperious will of Mr. Polk, of an appropriation, essential, not so much to its improvement, as to its preservation, and almost to its existence. Mr. President, the day was, when no man would have dared to deny that the condition of Boston harbor was a matter of national concern. When the British government shut up Boston port by a tyrannical edict, the whole Union was roused to reopen it. When the Liberty Boys choked up the channel with British tea, that, too, was an obstruction which was not