At numerous county and district conventions, and town meetings, where the nominations of the Baltimore Convention were ratified with enthusiasm, addresses were made and resolutions passed, which rebuked, with deserved indignation and contempt, the action of that convention in relation to Mr. Rantoul. The democracy of Massachusetts deemed themselves insulted, in his person, when his demand to be heard, and when by every rule of justice, as well as parliamentary usage, he had the clearest right to be heard, in vindication of his claim to a seat in the convention,-was met by the denial of that right. It was deeply felt at the North, deeply felt everywhere, that a more just demand was never made, than that of Mr. Rantoul, for a hearing, before the convention decided against him. The insolent arrogance of injustice, “clothed with a little brief authority," was never carried further, than by the men, who, in the bitterness of their malice, had for months been plotting against him, and now consummated their crime against liberty, by refusing a request, which no court of justice in a civilized country can deny to the greatest malefactor,—namely, to be heard in his own defence. It is for this that the proceedings of the Baltimore Convention in the case of Mr. Rantoul will always be remembered only to be execrated. Neither the design of this work nor the space in it admits the numerous addresses and resolutions so strongly expressive of the indignant sentiments of freemen, which those proceedings called forth, should be transferred to these pages. The style of them is sufficiently illustrated by the following resolutions. The democrats of Worcester assembled in large numbers at the City Hall, on Wednesday evening, June 16, 1852, and—

"Resolved, That the rejection, by the national convention, of Hon. Robert Rantoul, Jr., (the regularly elected delegate of the four thousand democrats of the second district in this Commonwealth,) was an act in violation of a fundamental rule of party organization. Yet as we believe that the convention decided the case under a misapprehension of the facts; and furthermore, that it is eminently a matter for the party at home to settle among themselves, that distinguished democrat may commit his claims to the continued confidence and regard of

the democracy of Massachusetts, to that sober judgment of the people that will sustain the right while it condemns the wrong."

The democrats of Norfolk county, at their mass ratification meeting at Quincy, with similar spirit

"Resolved, That we, in common with the democracy of Massachusetts, adhere to that foundation of our principles, that all power emanates from, and is in the hands of the people; and we recognize the right of no national convention to decide whom the democrats of any district shall elect to represent them in convention, or in congress; and that honor and praise belong to those delegates from this State who nobly stood by the democracy of the second district, and supported the claims of their regularly elected and distinguished delegate to his seat in the national democratic convention."

Indeed, there was but one sentiment on this subject known to the intelligent and the free throughout the country, whether north or south of Mason and Dixon's line.

SPEECH AT THE DEMOCRATIC DISTRICT CONVENTION,

HELD AT SALEM, JULY 5, 1852.

MR. PRESIDENT, LADIES, AND GENTLEMEN : - It is with great pleasure that I have this opportunity of meeting once more so many old and tried democratic friends, who have stood by me so long, and who, from what I have heard since I entered this hall, I believe will do me the justice to say that I have always stood by them. No newly manufactured democrats, boasting of newlyfangled dogmas with which they seek to supplant the ancient faith of the Declaration of Independence, of the rights of Massachusetts, and of the Constitution of the United States, no bringersin of damnable heresies into the pure church of the gospel of freedom, do I see before me; but wherever I turn my eyes I behold men proved and tried in adverse as in prosperous fortunes, veteran followers of Elbridge Gerry and of Samuel Adams, of Jefferson, and Madison, and Jackson, unterrified when adversity frowned darkest, invincible and incorruptible by the seductions of success and power. Everywhere in this throng, almost too vast for the ample dimensions of this noble structure,

do I recognize the well known countenances of the men, and the sons of the men, (for I can now remember a great way back,) whom I met here in this city, in March, 1834, when the high-toned maxims of the British monarchy were proclaimed as the oracles of American statesmen, when aristocracy and federalism gathered all their forces, when gloom brooded over the democratic party, and the tempest burst upon us. I remember well those times. When that squall struck the ship of State, the fairweather sailors, the fresh-water navigators, did not keep their stand upon the deck. They had not got their sea-legs on. It was for us then, my friends, to breast the storm. We looked the wind in the eye. We encountered with unblanched cheek that terrible crisis, and swerved not for a moment from any point of duty. It is not for the land-lubbers who skulked below till the hour of danger was over, to undertake to give us lessons of practical seamanship.

There is nothing so wholesome, there is nothing so favorable to a healthful development of our free democratic institutions as an occasional recurrence to the fundamental principles on which those institutions are based. This day and this place are peculiarly fitted for such recurrence. The anniversary which calls together this day the millions of our fellowcountrymen, naturally suggests the consideration of those principles, and of the history of their establishment, nowhere more appropriate, more gratifying, more instructive, than within the limits of this Commonwealth. For, let me say, it is the State of Massachusetts to which freedom, a generous, a broad idea of freedom, first took root upon this continent. Why, my friends, in the year 1620, when the Pilgrims had reached our shores, not when they had first landed, but before they first landed, on the 11th of November, what was their first act? It was to combine themselves into a civil body politic, and they drew up a social compact which was the first true social compact since the world was made.

It was the fathers of Plymouth colony, the oldest portion of Massachusetts, who, on that day, before they first landed in 1620, laid the foundations deep and strong upon which we have built. Let us trust in God that we build not stubble, but true and solid stone. How was it in Salem? Here our fathers began before they crossed to this side of the ocean. The men who founded the colony of Massachusetts Bay, by the settlement of Salem, Saltonstall and others, refused to come here until the charter had been transferred wholly to this side of the Atlantic. In August, 1629, they declared that all the powers of an active government should be transferred to this side of the ocean before they went on shipboard; and they went on to exercise powers in 1634, which, to use the words of Chalmers, could only be justified by "those principles of independence which sprang up among them, and have at all times governed

their actions." He charges it upon them that they came here intending to establish the principles of free government in Massachusetts Bay; and I doubt not they did so intend. We, then, stand on holy ground. Their early acts our fathers did not afterwards belie. In 1638, they refused to return the patent to England, disobeying the peremptory mandate of the court. But some "bad minds- yea, and some weak ones," said they, "would think it lawful, if not necessary, to accept a general governor." These were the beginnings of independence and liberty in Massachusetts.

The world is by this time aware what beneficial genius inspires American progress, and what miracles she has wrought already, and what she promises to achieve hereafter, transforming altogether the apparent destiny of the human race. A hundred years before the event which we celebrate, it seemed that the toiling millions of men were doomed forever to bear the burden of hereditary masters, and that tyrants were born booted and spurred to ride them "by the grace of God." Now, no sane man believes in any other "finality" than the universal emancipation of every soul from the dominion of another. The question is no longer, will it come, but only how will it come; how with the least delay, the least suffering, the least bloodshed, and the greatest good to all. It is the leaven of American doctrine and example, fermenting in the heart of the old world, that has brought about this change.

At the close of the seventeenth century, less than one third of a million of humble colonists lined our Atlantic seaboard. Seventy-six years later, their descendants, still less than three millions in number, declared themselves an independent nation. Now, after an equal lapse of time, twenty-five millions inherit the fruit of the great deeds of the founders of our nation, a population more numerous than that of the island of Great Britain; more intelligent, and possessing more of the means of comfort and enjoyment than any equal population on the globe. Look forward for another period of seventy-six years, and they will have multiplied to more than two hundred millions of souls, and will display more wealth and power on land and on the sea, and will exert a greater influence on the world, than Great Britain and France combined. It is this spectacle of growing greatness to which all eyes are turned, and towards. which, should our virtue be as rare as our felicity, all hearts will be attracted.

I have intimated to you how independence and liberty originated in Massachusetts. And the Union, where did that begin? In 1643, a union was formed between this and the neighboring colonies. In 1775, the colonists met through their delegates to carry on resistance to Great Britain. Chalmers, writing soon after that time, says that this Union of

1775 was but the duplicate of 1643, and that "both originated from Massachusetts, forever fruitful in projects for independence."

It is not necessary for me to quote history further to show you where American independence began. It began here, in Massachusetts, - and perhaps I might say, with the early settlers of this city of Salem. American independence commenced here in Massachusetts. It was effected here. They were Massachusetts men that developed the idea, the great plan of resistance to the colossal power of a British empire. How soon, think you, did the independence of these colonies occur to any man in the United States, and who was the man to whom it occurred? One hundred years ago or thereabouts, John Adams, writing a letter, when he was a boy as you might call him, for he was then in his tender years, almost a quarter of a century before the Declaration of Independence, gave his opinion that in one hundred years the population of the colonies would be equal to that of Great Britain. If he had been selecting the precise year in which this equality would occur, he could not have made a nearer approximation. At the time he mentioned, the population was about the same as that of Great Britain, and the shipping was a little larger than that of Great Britain and Ireland together. There was the mature sagacity of a young and vigorous Massachusetts mind. For it was John Adams, also, who, writing in 1754, said that sooner or later these united colonies would become a great and independent nation, — powerful on the land by their union, and more powerful upon the sea than either Great Britain or France. Why, it is hardly to be expected of mortal man, that he should foresee the future as did John Adams.

You all know who introduced among the members of the congress the idea of the Declaration of Independence, and you know, too, by whose influence it was that that idea of a Declaration of Independence was strengthened and prevailed. Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration, has said of John Adams, that he was "the Colossus on the floor who sustained it in debate."

I have alluded to these subjects, because they show us where we have stood. Massachusetts men have stood in the fore-front of the battle of freedom. And the question is for Massachusetts men, Shall Massachusetts continue to stand where she has always stood, — first and foremost in the van of freedom, confronting all assaults,-defying, whether by direct onset or by the power of corruption, — defying all attacks, either open or secret? Shall she lead the van in the battle of liberty, as she has been wont to do for more than two hundred years past?

Massachusetts was not content that she had championed upon the floor of congress, the Declaration of Independence. Massachusetts did the hard work which wrought out the realization of the Declaration of Inde