ngress be
run in every district, regardless of the chances of success. We are
aware that it is sometimes a temporary gratification, when a friend
cannot succeed, to be able to choose between opponents; but we believe
that that gratification is the seed-time which never fails to be
followed by a most abundant harvest of bitterness. By this policy we
entangle ourselves. By voting for our opponents, such of us as do it
in some measure estop ourselves to complain of their acts, however
glaringly wrong we may believe them to be. By this policy no one portion
of our friends can ever be certain as to what course another portion
may adopt; and by this want of mutual and perfect understanding our
political identity is partially frittered away and lost. And, again,
those who are thus elected by our aid ever become our bitterest
persecutors. Take a few prominent examples. In 1830 Reynolds was elected
Governor; in 1835 we exerted our whole strength to elect Judge Young
to the United States Senate, which effort, though failing, gave him the
prominence that subsequently elected him; in 1836 General Ewing, was so
elected to the United States Senate; and yet let us ask what three men
have been more perseveringly vindictive in their assaults upon all our
men and measures than they? During the last summer the whole State
was covered with pamphlet editions of misrepresentations against us,
methodized into chapters and verses, written by two of these same
men,--Reynolds and Young, in which they did not stop at charging us with
error merely, but roundly denounced us as the designing enemies of
human liberty, itself. If it be the will of Heaven that such men shall
politically live, be it so; but never, never again permit them to draw a
particle of their sustenance from us.

The sixth resolution recommends the adoption of the convention system
for the nomination of candidates. This we believe to be of the very
first importance. Whether the system is right in itself we do not stop
to inquire; contenting ourselves with trying to show that, while our
opponents use it, it is madness in us not to defend ourselves with
it. Experience has shown that we cannot successfully defend ourselves
without it. For examples, look at the elections of last year. Our
candidate for governor, with the approbation of a large portion of the
party, took the field without a nomination, and in open opposition to
the system. Wherever in the counties the Whigs had held co