40 I have expressed my entire opposition to the admission of slave States, or the acquisition of new slave territories, to be added to the United States. I know, sir, no change in my own sentiments, or my own purposes, in that respect. I will now again ask my friend from Rhode Island to read another extract from a speech of mine made at a Whig Convention in Springfield, Massachusetts, in the month of September, 1847. Mr. Greene here read the following extract: “We hear much just now of & panacea for the dangers and evils of slavery and slave annexation, which they call the/ Wilmot proviso’ That certainly is a just sentiment, but if is not a sentiment to found any new party upon. It is not a sentiment on which Massachusetts Whigs differ. There is not a man in this hall who holds to it more firmly than I do, nor one who adheres to it more than another. (i I feel some little interest in this matter, sir. Did not I commit myself in 1837 to the whole doctrine, fully, entirely ? And I must be permitted, to say that I cannot quite consent that more recent discoverers should claim the merit and take out a patent. “ I deny the priority of their invention. Allow me to say, sir, it is not their thunder. * * * “We are to use the first and last and every occasion which offers to oppose the extension of slave power. “ But I speak of it here, as in Congress, as a political question, a question for statesmen to act upon. We must so regard it. I certainly do not mean to say that it is less important in a moral point of view, that it is not more important in many other points of view; but, as a a legislator, or in any official capacity, I must look at
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