arried on. It is a great error to suppose that conscience or
philanthropy requires the constant agitation of this topic. We of the
North have nothing whatever to do with slavery in the Southern States,
for we have solemnly covenanted with them that we will not interfere
with it, and that we will perform certain duties growing out of it.
Those duties are obligatory upon us, and no pretense of a higher law can
absolve us from them. These positions were presented by Mr. Choate with
all his accustomed strength, and with even more than the warmth of
feeling and profusion of illustration which distinguish all his efforts.

Mr. WEBSTER wrote a letter in reply to an invitation to attend the great
Union meeting at Staunton, Va., approving most heartily of the objects
of the proposed meeting, and assuring them, of his hearty sympathy and
his unchangeable purpose to co-operate with them and other good men in
upholding the honor of the States, and the Constitution of the
Government. Political martyrdom, he declares, would be preferable to
beholding the voluntary dismemberment of this glorious Republic. "It is
better to die while the honor of the country is untarnished, and the
flag of the Union still flying over our heads, than to live to behold
that honor gone forever, and that flag prostrate in the dust." He
assures them, from personal observation at the North, that through the
masses of the Northern people the general feeling and the great cry is,
for the Union, and for its preservation: and, "while there prevails a
general purpose to maintain the Union as it is, that purpose embraces,
as its just and necessary means, a firm resolution of supporting the
rights of all the States, precisely as they stand guaranteed and secured
by the Constitution. And you may depend upon it," he adds, "that every
provision in that instrument in favor of the rights of Virginia and the
other Southern States, and every constitutional act of Congress, passed
to uphold and enforce those rights, will be upheld and maintained not
only by the power of the law, but also by the prevailing influence of
public opinion. Accidents may occur to defeat the execution of a law in
a particular instance; misguided men may, it is possible, sometimes
enable others to elude the claims of justice and the rights founded in
solemn constitutional compact, but, on the whole, and in the end, the
law will be executed and obeyed; the South will see that there is
principle and pa