Now can there be any difficulty in understanding this?  To you Democrats it may not seem like principle; but surely you cannot fail to perceive the position plainly enough.  The distinction between it and the position of your candidate is broad and obvious, and I admit you have a clear right to show it is wrong if you can; but you have no right to pretend you cannot see it at all.  We see it, and to us it appears like principle, and the best sort of principle at that—­the principle of allowing the people to do as they please with their own business.  My friend from Indiana (C.  B. Smith) has aptly asked, “Are you willing to trust the people?” Some of you answered substantially, “We are willing to trust the people; but the President is as much the representative of the people as Congress.”  In a certain sense, and to a certain extent, he is the representative of the people.  He is elected by them, as well as Congress is; but can he, in the nature of things know the wants of the people as well as three hundred other men, coming from all the various localities of the nation?  If so, where is the propriety of having a Congress?  That the Constitution gives the President a negative on legislation, all know; but that this negative should be so combined with platforms and other appliances as to enable him, and in fact almost compel him, to take the whole of legislation into his own hands, is what we object to, is what General Taylor objects to, and is what constitutes the broad distinction between you and us.  To thus transfer legislation is clearly to take it from those who understand with minuteness the interests of the people, and give it to one who does not and cannot so well understand it.  I understand your idea that if a Presidential candidate avow his opinion upon a given question, or rather upon all questions, and the people, with full knowledge of this, elect him, they thereby distinctly approve all those opinions.  By means of it, measures are adopted or rejected contrary to the wishes of the whole of one party, and often nearly half of the other.  Three, four, or half a dozen questions are prominent at a given time; the party selects its candidate, and he takes his position on each of these questions.  On all but one his positions have already been indorsed at former elections, and his party fully committed to them; but that one is new, and a large portion of them are against it.  But what are they to do?  The whole was strung together; and they must take all, or reject all.  They cannot take what they like, and leave the rest.  What they are already committed to being the majority, they shut their eyes, and gulp the whole.  Next election, still another is introduced in the same way.  If we run our eyes along the line of the past, we shall see that almost if not quite all the articles of the present Democratic creed have been at first forced upon the party in this very way.  And just now, and just so, opposition to internal improvements is to be established if General Cass