never introduced the subject of slavery to that body, and never would.  Mr. Clay, in 1839, makes a speech for the Presidency, in which he says, that to discuss the subject of slavery is moral treason, and that no man has a right to introduce the subject into Congress.  Mr. Benton, in 1844, laid down his platform, and he not only denies the right, but asserts that he never has and never will discuss the subject.  Yet Mr. Clay, from 1839 down to his death, hardly made a remarkable speech of any kind, except on slavery.  Mr. Webster, having indulged now and then in a little easy rhetoric, as at Niblo’s and elsewhere, opens his mouth in 1840, generously contributing his aid to both sides, and stops talking about it only when death closes his lips.  Mr. Benton’s six or eight speeches in the United States Senate have all been on the subject of slavery in the Southwestern section of the country, and form the basis of whatever claim he has to the character of a statesman, and he owes his seat in the next Congress somewhat, perhaps, to anti-slavery pretentions!  The Whig and Democratic parties pledged themselves just as emphatically against the antislavery discussion,—­against agitation and free speech.  These men said:  “It sha’n’t be talked about; it won’t be talked about!” These are your statesmen!—­men who understand the present that is, and mould the future!  The man who understands his own time, and whose genius moulds the future to his views, he is a statesman, is he not?  These men devoted themselves to banks, to the tariff, to internal improvements, to constitutional and financial questions.  They said to slavery:  “Back! no entrance here!  We pledge ourselves against you.”  And then there came up a little printer-boy, who whipped them into the traces, and made them talk, like Hotspur’s starling, nothing BUT slavery.  He scattered all these gigantic shadows,—­tariff, bank, constitutional questions, financial questions; and slavery, like the colossal head in Walpole’s romance, came up and filled the whole political horizon!  Yet you must remember he is not a statesman! he is a “fanatic.”  He has no discipline,—­Mr.  “Ion” says so; he does not understand the “discipline that is essential to victory”!  This man did not understand his own time, he did not know what the future was to be,—­he was not able to shape it—­he had no “prudence,”—­he had no “foresight”!  Daniel Webster says, “I have never introduced this subject, and never will,”—­and dies broken-hearted because he had not been able to talk enough about it!  Benton says, “I will never speak of slavery,”—­and lives to break with his party on this issue!  Clay says it is “moral treason” to introduce the subject into Congress—­and lives to see Congress turned into an antislavery debating society, to suit the purpose of one “too powerful individual.” * * * Remember who it was that said in 1831:  “I am in earnest—­I will not equivocate—­I will not excuse—­I will not retreat a single inch—­and I will