in good faith, to prevent any acquisition of territory whatever. But they took heart again, and the business went on.

Early in the second session of the Twenty-ninth Congress, viz. on the 4th of January, 1847, Mr. Preston King, a Democratic member from New York, asked leave to introduce a bill containing the provision already known throughout the country as the "Wilmot Proviso." The House was thin, and leave was refused by a vote of 89 to 86. On the 15th of February, the motion was renewed by Mr. Hamlin, a Democratic representative from Maine, in the form of an amendment to the bill "appropriating three millions of dollars to enable the President to enter upon negotiations for the restoration of peace with Mexico," commonly called the "three million bill." It passed the Committee of the Whole by a vote of 110 to 89, and was adopted by the House by a vote of 115 to 106, taken by yeas and nays. The Senate rejected the amendment by a vote of 31 to 21, and then passed the bill. The House abandoned the amendment by 102 nays to 97 yeas, after having sustained it in Committee by 90 to 80. And so ended the Twenty-ninth Congress. The decision of the House was not thought to be significant of its sense on the main question. The argument of Governor Cass, that it would be time to determine how to govern conquered territory when it should be acquired, was believed to have had much weight, and there was good hope that the right decision was only deferred.

Meantime, the Mexican war had introduced yet another element of importance into political action. After the almost monopoly of the Presidency for so long a time by the Slave States, it appeared to be a matter of general consent at Washington and elsewhere, that the next selection was to be from the North; and the view of the Whig party was particularly turned to a Northwestern statesman of judicial eminence. At this juncture the victories of General Taylor put a new face upon affairs, and again opened to the Slave Power an unanticipated deliverance. The brilliancy of his military skill, his "genuine old Teutonic pluck," his moderation and humanity, his sagacity and prudence in difficult affairs, attracted to him regard and admiration; and the ill-treatment which he was thought to have received from the government made him the object of a generous sympathy. Here were the materials capable of being wrought up into an availing popularity. The Slave Power, with its sleepless promptness, caught at the new chance. General Taylor had been bred in the midst of slavery, and was himself a large slaveholder. By interests and social affinities he was as closely connected as any man could be with that institution. So satisfactory to the Slave Power was he for these latter reasons, and so generally available a candidate did he seem for the former, that either party would have taken him up, and it was altogether

doubtful to which he belonged; for he had been "a man of war from his youth," and had never given a vote in his life. He was at last brought to declare himself, after some fashion, a Whig, from which it followed that he would surround himself with Whig counsellors, who in his name would carry out Whig policy, and dispense Whig patronage. That settled, the Whig party adopted, and in good time elected him, with large secessions, to be sure, from their own ranks, on account of his proslavery position, but more than counterbalanced by aid from Democratic votes.

All this was merely in its rudiments in the year 1847; but the coming event cast its shadows before, and they already confused the lights and shades in which objects had before stood in some clear shape and contrast. It enabled careful observers to put an interpretation upon transactions which occurred at the Convention of Massachusetts Whigs held at Springfield on the 29th of September.

Mr. Webster was determined to have a nomination for the Presidency from this Convention, and, with this view, insisted on attending its sitting. A large portion of the members were not of his mind, some, because they were sincere anti-SlavePower men, and could not trust him; some, because they wanted Mr. Clay; - some, though they had not yet divulged their plan, because they wanted General Taylor.

Mr. Winthrop was a delegate to the Convention from Boston. On account of his course in relation to the annexation of Texas, his vote for the war with Mexico, and other symptoms of devotion to the Slave Power, a portion of the Boston Whigs, at the election in 1846, had endeavored to displace him from his seat in Congress. They had nominated as a rival candidate Mr. Charles Sumner, and on his declining, Dr. Samuel G. Howe. But the attempt was unsuccessful. Mr. Winthrop was chosen by an increased majority. The men engaged in this opposition, and those in other parts of the State who sympathized with them, had received from the other section of the party the nickname of "Conscience Whigs." Their views were maintained with distinguished ability in the newspaper called the "Boston Whig," edited by Mr. Charles F. Adams. Among the large number of this class of men present at the Springfield Convention, Messrs. Charles F. Adams and Charles Sumner, delegates from Boston, Stephen C. Phillips from Salem, Charles Allen from Worcester, Keyes from Dedham, Palfrey from Cambridge, and others, took an active part in the proceedings.

The Whig State Central Committee, in which the Boston influence was all-powerful, of course had the charge of the preliminary arrangements. They placed Mr. Ashmun, of Springfield, in the chair, a proceeding which had the most important effect upon the fortunes of the day.

While the Committee on Resolutions were out, Mr. Webster made a long speech. He understood the then existing temper of the people, and he thought he understood the temper of the Convention. The committee which was expected to report his nomination was an unusual time deliberating, and the more it delayed its return, the more he warmed up, till he out-Wilmoted Wilmot in his denunciations of Slavery Extension. "Sir," said he, "I feel something of a personal interest in this. I take the sentiment of the Wilmot Proviso to be, that there shall be no annexation of slave territory to this Union. Did not I commit myself upon that in the year 1838, fully, entirely? And have I ever departed from it in the slightest degree? I must be permitted, Sir, to say, that I do not consent that more recent discoverers should take out a patent for the discovery. I do not quite consent that they should undertake to appropriate to themselves all the benefit and honor of it. Allow me to say, Sir, it is not their thunder."

There were numbers in the Convention who placed not the slightest reliance on Mr. Webster's professions on this subject. And, apart from all particular considerations of Mr. Webster, there were numbers more who had held with perfect sincerity the anti-Slave-Power views so profusely professed by the Whig party of Massachusetts, and who desired to have the action of that party correspond with its words. One of the resolutions reported by the committee lauded Mr. Webster. Another recommended him "to the favorable consideration of the Whig National Convention, as a candidate for the office of President of the United States." Others condemned the annexation of Texas and the war with Mexico; and in one, "the Whigs of Massachusetts declare, and put this declaration of their purpose on record, that Massachusetts will never consent that American territory, however acquired, shall become a part of the American Union, except upon the unalterable condition that there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude therein, otherwise than in the punishment of crime."

Mr. Palfrey, a delegate from Cambridge, one of the many persons who liked this sentiment and wished it carried out, moved to amend the series by adding the following:

"Resolved, That the Whigs of Massachusetts will support no men as candidates for the offices of President and Vice-President, but such as are known by their acts or declared opinions to be opposed to the extension of slavery.”

By persons capable of understanding English when they diligently apply their minds to it, this resolution has been sometimes called by the name of "Mr. Palfrey's Resolution of 'No Union with Slaveholders.'" It was opposed by Mr. Winthrop and two other Boston gentlemen, and defended, amidst tumultuous outcries and other interruptions from the Boston delegation, by the mover, and Messrs. Adams, Sumner, Allen, and

Dwight of Springfield. The vote was taken after nightfall, when many of the country delegations had gone home. The chair declared the majority to be against the amendment. The better opinion was that the chair was very much mistaken. The Whig County Conventions met presently afterwards; and in the greater number of them, including nearly, if not all, the large counties, except Suffolk, the resolution was adopted either in terms or in tenor. But Suffolk (Boston) was a very material exception.

If demonstrations, of the description of some to which we have adverted, appeared to justify an inference of subserviency to the Slave Power on the part of the interest now dominant in Boston, there had also been made, on a recent occasion, an express declaration of it, which for its explicitness and positiveness, as well as the quarter from which it proceeded, gave great pain. A negro concealed himself in New Orleans on board a Boston vessel, and was brought by her to Boston, having been discovered at sea. The captain, one Hannum, with the privity of his owner, a merchant named Pearson, confined him, first on board the vessel, and then on one of the islands in the harbor. The poor fellow escaped, and reached South Boston, where he was overtaken and recovered by Hannum, who told the bystanders he was a thief. These facts becoming known, a writ of habeas corpus was granted by Judge Hubbard, of the Supreme Court, but, with or without the help of the officers, it was eluded, and the fugitive was conveyed back to slavery. On the 24th of September, a public meeting was held at Faneuil Hall to consider this transaction, at which John Quincy Adams presided. The resolutions which were passed called Pearson into the newspapers. "I can safely say,' "I can safely say," were his words, "I have been almost universally commended for having sent him back, with the exception of fanatics or rank Abolitionists... If I mistake not, you will find the response of those assembled on change, any day from half past one to two o'clock, five to one, that they would have done as I did." A shocking thing this, however one may qualify Pearson's words, and however confident one may feel that the proportion of merchants in Boston, deserving to be so described, was altogether untruly stated,

a shocking thing, any way, to be said of the merchants of Boston by one of their own number. Nor did that imminent danger to the Union yet exist, in which many of these gentlemen have found the painful occasion for their more recent action.

No. V.

ALLIANCE OF THE NORTHERN MONEY POWER.

In our last number were introduced some facts illustrative of the control of the Slave Power over the interest dominant in Boston; that is, the mercantile and manufacturing interest. The case of Boston is in this respect the same as that of the other commercial cities. By force of their large population, and still more by force of their influence over the interior country, they respectively possess a political power which it is important to the Slave oligarchy to enlist on its side, which it has the means of enlisting, and which it does effectively enlist, and greatly to its own aid and comfort.

In the Slave States, property and education are monopolized by the slaveholders. In the Free States, property and education are the monopoly of no class, but a large share of the former, and a fair proportion of the latter, are held by men in business. Not many of them are highly educated, and their average of general mental cultivation perhaps falls below that of the inhabitants of the rural districts. But commonly they are not ignorant; their pursuits cultivate habits of activity and energy, and a general capacity for affairs; their relations to each other and to the community tend to create an esprit de corps which gives the strength of union; and their position favors prompt as well as concentrated action.

Accordingly, to secure the Money Power of the North on its side is an immense object for the Slave Power of the South. It is the old policy by which Sparta and Athens successively governed Greece by having a party of their own within its cities.

How is this power in the midst of ourselves secured to the service of an interest foreign and hostile to us? By what means is it that the wealth of the Free States is made an instrument in the conspiracy against their freedom?

Some of the least definite and perhaps the least considerable of the causes of this alliance are a mere natural development of our very feeble and foolish human nature. Wealth sets the fashion, and wealth must be in the fashion; and where the fashions of a large portion of the affluent connect themselves with an institution,-slavery or any other, attractive associations come to attach to it in the minds of others of the affluent class. Again, wealth is power, and to power it belongs more or less to be unfeeling, arrogant, tyrannical. To many people the privilege of oppressing the weak, and, next to that, the privilege of being indifferent to their oppressions, is one of the most comfortable luxuries of a condition of ease. The cry of Mr. Pick