dor requires me to add that they profess a friendship the largest part of which might be analyzed into dislike of their political opponents. I have for twenty years past, been a constant and careful observer of public men and affairs; and for twelve years, at least, I have been intimately aware of the private as well as the public declarations and conduct of the representative men in almost every town and village of the Commonwealth. I think I may claim also some intimacy with the great body of the people of Massachusetts, of whatsoever party. This period has been one of extraordinary and intense political interest. The tenderest sentiments, the deepest convictions, the warmest emotions, have all been stirred by the course of public affairs. Bitter disappointments, the keenest sense of injustice, the consciousness of subjection to most flagrant wrong, have fallen to the lot of our people. The fugitive slave bill of 1850, with its merciless severity, and the ostentatious indignity with which it was executed; the repeal of the Missouri restriction upon the extension of slavery over national territory; the violent means adopted to prevent emigrants from this Commonwealth from participating in the settlement of Kansas; the invasion of that Territory by men armed with the plunder from national arsenals; the imposition of fraudulent legislatures upon a people temporarily subjugated by ruffianism and unprotected by a Federal Executive, which also forbade them to protect themselves; the

indiscriminate pillage, fire and slaughter to which peaceable settlers were subjected without cause or excuse; the repeated exertions of the national administration in conspiracy with the enemies of freedom and good government, to impose and enforce upon Kansas a Constitution sanctioning slavery; the attempt to withdraw the discussion of political questions from the people themselves and to confine it to a conclave of judges; the assault upon free speech in Congress by a murderous attack upon a Senator in his seat, for opinions expressed in debate and for the manner of their expression; the indifference or positive approval with which this attempt to overthrow representative institutions, was treated throughout a large portion of the country; the prostitution of all the powers of the government and the bending of all its energy to propagate a certain interest for the benefit of a few speculators in lands, negroes, and politics, and to discourage the free labor of the toiling masses of the people; the menaces of violence and war against the Constitution and the Union with which our arguments and our constitutional resistance have been met; these all are but a part of the record of the last ten years of American political history, which is burned into the memory of the people of Massachusetts.

And yet, during all the excitement of this period, inflamed by the heats of repeated Presidential elections, I have never known a single Massachusetts

republican to abandon his loyalty, surrender his faith, or seal up his heart against the good hopes and kind affections which every devoted citizen ought to entertain for every section of his country. During all this maladministration of the national government, the people of Massachusetts have never wavered from their faith in its principles or their loyalty to its organization. Looking forward to the long ages of the future; building always, in their own minds, for countless generations yet to come; they have endured and are willing still, cheerfully and hopefully to endure much wrong and more misconception, because they trust in the blood inherited from heroic ancestors; in the principles of constitutional liberty; in the theory of democratic institutions; in the honest purpose of the intelligent masses of the people everywhere; in the capacity of Truth and Right ultimately to reach and control the minds of men; in an undying affection for their whole country, its memories, traditions and hopes; and above all, in the good Providence of God.

It was at a great cost that our fathers established their independence, and erected this Union of States,— which exists under the form of a NATIONAL GOVERNMENT, unquestionable as to its authority to act on all persons and all things within the sphere of its jurisdiction and the range of its granted powers. It needs ask permission from no one to fulfil its functions or to perpetuate its existence. It has no right nor power to abdicate; nor to expel a State, or any portion of the

people of any State, from the benefits of its protection; nor to permit their revolt against the duties of a common citizenship. By the incurring of national debts, by the granting of pensions, patents and copy-rights, by the issue of commissions establishing a tenure of office not terminable at the pleasure of the appointing power, by the purchase and the conquest of territory erected into additional States, by the improvement of harbors and rivers and the construction of military roads, by the settlement of wildernesses and the development of their resources under the national patronage, by the investment of vast sums of money in buildings for the transaction of public business, in light-houses, navy yards, fortifications, vessels of war, and their equipment, by the assumption of obligations under treaties with Indian tribes and foreign powers, the People of the United States have paid and are paying a continuing consideration for the existence of this National Government in all its sovereign territorial integrity. All the people of all the States are interlocked and interlaced in a vast web of mutual interests, rights and obligations as various and as precious as are the characteristics of that wonderful civilization in which they participate. And this Union, through whatever throes or crises it may pass, cannot expire except with the annihilation of the People.

Come what may, I believe that Massachusetts will do her duty. She will stand by the incoming National Administration, as she has stood by the past ones; because

her people will forever stand by their Country. The records of her Revolutionary history declare her capacity and her will to expend money, sympathy and men to sustain the common cause. More than half the soldiers of the Revolution were furnished by New England; and Massachusetts alone contributed more men to the Federal armies than were enlisted in all the Southern States. She is willing to make the same sacrifices again, if need be, in the same cause ;-and her capacity to do so has increased in proportion with the increase in her wealth and population. The echoes of the thunder of her Revolutionary battle-fields have not yet died away upon the ears of her sons, and the vows and prayers of her early patriots still whisper their inspiration. The people of Massachusetts will, in any event, abide by her plighted faith. She agreed to the Constitution of the United States. It is the charter of the Union, it is the record of the contract, and the written evidence of rights intended to be secured to the States and to the People.

History shows that never at any one time is there more than one grand issue on trial under a popular government, before the great tribunal of the people. A reactionary movement against the doctrines and traditions of liberty handed down from the beginning, precipitated the trial in the elections of 1856 of an issue made up upon the relation of slavery to the territorial possessions of the nation, and the right of the People to manage those possessions so as