nd fostering
the labor of the country, in its various branches. There are other
things important, but I will not allude to them. These three I hold to
be essential.

There are three candidates presented to the choice of the American
people. General Taylor is the Whig candidate, standing upon the
nomination of the Whig Convention; General Cass is the candidate of the
opposing and now dominant party in the country; and a third candidate is
presented in the person of Mr. Van Buren, by a convention of citizens
assembled at Buffalo, whose object, or whose main object, as it appears
to me, is contained in one of those considerations which I have
mentioned, and that is, the prevention of the further increase of
slavery;--an object in which you and I, Gentlemen, so far as that goes,
entirely concur with them, I am sure.

Most of us who are here to-day are Whigs, National Whigs, Massachusetts
Whigs, Old Colony Whigs, and Marshfield Whigs, and if the Whig
nomination made at Philadelphia were entirely satisfactory to the people
of Massachusetts and to us, our path of duty would be plain. But the
nomination of a candidate for the Presidency made by the Whig Convention
at Philadelphia is not satisfactory to the Whigs of Massachusetts. That
is certain, and it would be idle to attempt to conceal the fact. It is
more just and more patriotic, it is more manly and practical, to take
facts as they are, and things as they are, and to deduce our own
conviction of duty from what exists before us. However respectable and
distinguished in the line of his own profession, or however estimable as
a private citizen, General Taylor is a military man, and a military man
merely. He has had no training in civil affairs. He has performed no
functions of a civil nature under the Constitution of his country. He
has been known and is known, only by his brilliant achievements at the
head of an army. Now the Whigs of Massachusetts, and I among them, are
of opinion that it was not wise, nor discreet, to go to the army for the
selection of a candidate for the Presidency of the United States. It is
the first instance in their history in which any man of mere military
character has been proposed for that high office. General Washington was
a great military character; but by far a greater civil character. He had
been employed in the councils of his country, from the earliest dawn of
the Revolution. He had been in the Continental Congress, and he had
establishe