way that it was like the pair of pantaloons the Yankee pedlar offered for sale, “large enough for any man, small enough for any boy.”  They therefore had taken a position calculated to break down their single important declared object.  They were working for the election of either Gen. Cass or Gen. Taylor.  The speaker then went on to show, clearly and eloquently, the danger of extension of slavery, likely to result from the election of Gen. Cass.  To unite with those who annexed the new territory to prevent the extension of slavery in that territory seemed to him to be in the highest degree absurd and ridiculous.  Suppose these gentlemen succeed in electing Mr. Van Buren, they had no specific means to prevent the extension of slavery to New Mexico and California, and Gen. Taylor, he confidently believed, would not encourage it, and would not prohibit its restriction.  But if Gen. Cass was elected, he felt certain that the plans of farther extension of territory would be encouraged, and those of the extension of slavery would meet no check.  The “Free Soil” mart in claiming that name indirectly attempts a deception, by implying that Whigs were not Free Soil men.  Declaring that they would “do their duty and leave the consequences to God” merely gave an excuse for taking a course they were not able to maintain by a fair and full argument.  To make this declaration did not show what their duty was.  If it did we should have no use for judgment, we might as well be made without intellect; and when divine or human law does not clearly point out what is our duty, we have no means of finding out what it is but by using our most intelligent judgment of the consequences.  If there were divine law or human law for voting for Martin Van Buren, or if a, fair examination of the consequences and just reasoning would show that voting for him would bring about the ends they pretended to wish—­then he would give up the argument.  But since there was no fixed law on the subject, and since the whole probable result of their action would be an assistance in electing Gen. Cass, he must say that they were behind the Whigs in their advocacy of the freedom of the soil.

Mr. Lincoln proceeded to rally the Buffalo convention for forbearing to say anything—­after all the previous declarations of those members who were formerly Whigs—­on the subject of the Mexican War, because the Van Burens had been known to have supported it.  He declared that of all the parties asking the confidence of the country, this new one had less of principle than any other.

He wondered whether it was still the opinion of these Free Soil gentlemen, as declared in the “whereas” at Buffalo, that the Whig and Democratic parties were both entirely dissolved and absorbed into their own body.  Had the Vermont election given them any light?  They had calculated on making as great an impression in that State as in any part of the Union, and there their attempts had been wholly ineffectual.  Their failure was a greater success than they would find in any other part of the Union.