shake with horrid fear, lest the proposed change should put the interests of the public in great danger. Ten thousand Post Offices, moved by the same apprehension, join in the cry of alarm, while a perfect earthquake of disinterested remonstrance proceeds from the Custom Houses. Patronage and favoritism tremble and quake, through every limb and every nerve, lest the people should be found in favor of a change, which might endanger the liberties of the country, or at least break down its present eminent and distinguished prosperity, by abandoning the measures, so wise, so beneficent, so successful, and so popular, which the present administration has pursued!

Fellow-citizens, we have all sober and important duties to perform. I have not addressed you, to-day, for the purpose of joining in a premature note of triumph, or raising a shout for anticipated victories. We are in the controversy, not through it. It is our duty to spare no pains to circulate information, and to spread the truth far and wide. Let us persuade those who differ from us, if we can, to hear both sides. Let us remind them that we are all embarked together, with a common interest and a common fate. And let us, without rebuke or unkindness, beseech them to consider what the good of the whole requires, what is best for them and for us. There are two causes which keep back thousands of honest inen from joining those who wish for a change.

The first of these is the fear of reproach from former associates, and the pain which party denunciation is capable of inflicting. But, surely, the manliness of the American character is superior to this! Surely, no American citizen will feel himself chained to the wheels of any party, nor bound to follow it, against his conscience, and his sense of the interest of the country. Resolution and decision ought to dissipate such restraints, and to leave men free at once to act upon their own convictions. Unless this can be done, party has entailed upon us a miserable slavery, by compelling us to act against our consciences, on questions of the greatest importance.

The other cause is the constant cry that the party of the administration is the true democratic party, or the more popular party in the Government and in the country. The falsity of this claim has not been sufficiently exposed. It should have been met, and should be now met, not only by denial, but by proof. If they mean the new democracy-the cry against credit, against industry, against labor, against man's right to leave his own earnings to his own children - why, then, doubtless, they are right; all this sort of democracy is theirs. But if by democracy they mean a conscientious and stern adherence to the true popular principles of the Constitution and the Government, then I think they have very little claim to it. Is the augmentation of Executive power a democratic

principle? Is the separation of the currency of Government from the currency of the people a democratic principle? Is the imbodying a large military force, in time of peace, a democratic principle?

Let us entreat honest men not to take names for things, nor pretences for proofs. If democracy, in any constitutional sense, belongs to our adversaries, let them show their title and produce their evidence. Let the question be examined; and let not intelligent and well-meaning citizens be kept to the support of measures which in their hearts and consciences they disapprove, because their authors put forth such loud claims to the sole possession of regard for the people.

Fellow-citizens of the County of Saratoga: In taking leave of you, I cannot but remind you how distinguished a place your county occupies in the history of the country. I cannot be ignorant, that in the midst of you are many, at this moment, who saw in this neighborhood the triumph of republican arms in the surrender of General Burgoyne. I cannot doubt that a fervent spirit of patriotism burns in their breasts, and in the breasts of their children. They helped to save their country amidst the storms of war; they will help to save it, I am fully persuaded, in the present severe civil crisis. Fellow-citizens, I verily believe it is true, that, of all that are left to us from the Revolution, nine tenths are with us, in the existing contest. If there be living a revolutionary officer, or soldier, who has joined in the attacks upon General Harrison's military character, I have not met with him. It is not, therefore, in the County of Saratoga, that a cause sustained by such means is likely to prevail.

Fellow-citizens, the great question is now before the country. If, with the experience of the past, the American people think proper to confirm power in the hands which now hold it, and thereby sanction the leading policy of the administration, it will be your duty and mine to bow, with submission, to the public will; but, for myself, I shall not believe it possible for me to be of service to the country, in any department of public life. I shall look on, with no less love of country than ever, but with fearful forebodings of what may be near at hand.

But, fellow-citizens, I do not at all expect that result. I fully believe the change is coming. If we all do our duty, we shall restore the Government to its former policy, and the country to its former prosperity. And let us here, to-day, fellow-citizens, with full resolution and patriotic purpose of heart, give and take pledges that, until this great controversy be ended, our time, our talents, our efforts, are all due, and shall all be faithfully given, to our

COUNTRY.

VOL. III.

63

PP*

DECLARATION

OF PRINCIPLES AND PURPOSES ADOPTED BY A GENERAL CONVENTION OF THE WHIGS OF NEW ENGLAND, AT BUNKER HILL, ON THE TENTH OF SEPTEMBER, 1840. PREPARED BY MR. WEBSTER, AND SIGNED BY HIM AS PRESIDENT OF THE CONVENTION.

WHEN men pause from their ordinary occupations, and assemble in great numbers, a proper respect for the judgment of the country, and of the age, requires that they should clearly set forth the grave causes which have brought them together, and the purposes which they seek to promote.

Feeling the force of this obligation, fifty thousand of the free electors of the New England States, honored also by the presence of like free electors from nearly every other State in the Union, having assembled on Bunker Hill, on this 10th day of September, 1840, proceed to set forth a DECLARATION of their principles, and of the occasion and objects of their meeting.

In the first place, we declare our unalterable attachment to that Public Liberty, the purchase of so much blood and treasure, in the acquisition of which the field whereon we stand obtained early and imperishable renown. Bunker Hill is not a spot on which we shall forget the principles of our Fathers, or suffer any thing to quench within our own bosoms the love of freedom which we have inherited from them.

In the next place, we declare our warm and hearty devotion to the Constitution of the country, and to that Union of the States which it has so happily cemented, and so long and so prosperously preserved. We call ourselves by no local names, we recognize no geographical divisions, while we give utterance to our sentiments on high constitutional and political subjects. We are Americans, citizens of the United States, knowing no other country, and desiring to be distinguished by no other appellation. We believe the Constitution, while administered wisely and in its proper spirit, to be capable of protecting all parts of the country, securing all interests, and perpetuating a National Brotherhood among all the States. We believe that to foment local jealousies, to attempt to prove the existence of opposite interests between one part of the country and another, and thus to disseminate feelings of distrust and alienation, while it is in contemptuous disregard of the counsels of the great

Father of his country, is but one form, in which irregular ambition, destitute of all true patriotism, and a love of power, reckless of the means of its gratification, exhibit their unsubdued and burning desire.

We believe, too, that party spirit, however natural or unavoidable it may be in free Republics, yet when it gains such an ascendency in men's minds, as leads them to substitute party for country, to seek no ends but party ends, no approbation but party approbation, and to fear no reproach or contumely, so that there be no party dissatisfaction, not only alloys the true enjoyment of such institutions, but weakens, every day, the foundations on which they stand.

We are in favor of the liberty of speech and of the press; we are friends of free discussion; we espouse the cause of popular education; we believe in man's capacity for self-government; we desire to see the freest and widest dissemination of knowledge and of truth; and we believe, especially, in the benign influence of religious feeling, and moral instruction, on the social as well as on the individual happiness of man.

Holding these general sentiments and opinions, we have come together to declare that, under the present administration of the General Government, a course of measures has been adopted and pursued, in our judgments, disastrous to the best interests of the country, threatening the accumulation of still greater evils, utterly hostile to the true spirit of the Constitution and to the principles of civil liberty, and calling upon all men of honest purpose, disinterested patriotism, and unbiased intelligence, to put forth their utmost constitutional efforts in order to effect a change.

General Andrew Jackson was elected President of the United States, and took the oaths and his seat on the 4th of March, 1829; and we readily admit that, under his administration, certain portions of the public affairs were conducted with ability. But we have to lament that he was not proof against the insinuations and influences of evil counsellors, or perhaps against his own passions, when moved and excited. Hence, in one most important branch of the public interest, in that essential part of commercial regulation which respects the money, the currency, the circulation, and the internal exchanges, of the country, accidental occurrences, acting on his characteristic love of rule, and uneasiness under opposition, led him to depart from all that was expected from him, and to enter upon measures which plunged both him and the country in greater and greater difficulties at every step, so that, in this respect, his whole course of administration was but a series of ill-fated experiments, and of projects framed in disregard of prudence and precedent, and bursting in rapid succession; the final explosion taking place a few months after his retirement from office.

General Jackson was not elected with any desire or expectation,

on the part of any of his supporters, that he would interfere with the currency of the country. We affirm this as the truth of history. It is incapable of refutation or denial. It is as certain as that the American Revolution was not undertaken to destroy the rights of property, or overthrow the obligation of morals.

But, unhappily, he became involved in a controversy with the then existing Bank of the United States. He manifested a desire how originating, or by whom inspired, is immaterial to exercise a political influence over that institution, and to cause that institution to exercise, in turn, a political influence over the community. Published documents prove this, as plainly as they prove any other act of his administration. In this desire he was resisted, thwarted, and finally defeated. But what he could not govern, he supposed he could destroy; and the event showed that he did not overrate his popularity and his power. He pursued the Bank to the death, and achieved his triumph by the Veto of 1832. The accustomed means of maintaining a sound and uniform currency, for the use of the whole country, having been thus trampled down and destroyed, recourse was had to those new modes of experimental administration, to which we have already adverted, and which terminated so disastrously, both for the reputation of his administration and for the welfare of the country.

But General Jackson did not deny his constitutional obligations, nor seek to escape from their force. He never professedly abandoned all care over the general currency. His whole conduct shows that he admitted, throughout, the duty of the General Government to maintain a supervision over the currency of the country, both metallic and paper, for the general good and use of the people; and he congratulated both himself and the nation, that, by the measures adopted by him, the currency and the exchanges of the country were placed on a better footing than they ever had been under the operation of a Bank of the United States. This confidence in his own experiments, we know, proved most illusory. But the frequency with which he repeated this and similar declarations establishes, incontestably, his own sense of the duty of Government. the

In all the measures of General Jackson upon the currency, present Chief Magistrate is known to have concurred. Like him, he was opposed to the Bank of the United States; like him, he was in favor of the State Deposit Banks; and, like him, he insisted that, by the aid of such banks, the Administration had accomplished all that could be desired, on the great subjects of the currency and the exchange.

But the catastrophe of May, 1837, produced a new crisis, by overthrowing the last in the series of experiments, and creating an absolute necessity, either of returning to that policy of the Government which General Jackson had repudiated, or of renouncing