entional bearing on my position; and
therefore it was proper for me to allude to it here.

Gentlemen, there are some topics on which it has been my fortune to
differ from my old friends. They may be right on these topics; very
probably they are; but I am sure _I_ am right in maintaining my
opinions, such as they are, when I have formed them honestly and on
deliberation. There seems to me to be a disposition to postpone all
attempts to do good to the country to some future and uncertain day. Yet
there is a Whig majority in each house of Congress, and I am of opinion
that now is the time to accomplish what yet remains to be accomplished.
Some gentlemen are for suffering the present Congress to expire; another
Congress to be chosen, and to expire also; a third Congress to be
chosen, and then, if there shall be a Whig majority in both branches,
and a Whig President, they propose to take up highly important and
pressing subjects. These are persons, Gentlemen, of more sanguine
temperament than myself. "Confidence," says Lord Chatham, "is a plant of
slow growth in an old bosom." He referred to confidence in men, but the
remark is as true of confidence in predictions of future occurrences.
Many Whigs see before us a prospect of more power, and a better chance
to serve the country, than we now possess. Far along in the horizon,
they discern mild skies and halcyon seas, while fogs and darkness and
mists blind other sons of humanity from beholding all this bright
vision. It was not so that we accomplished our last great victory, by
simply brooding over a glorious Whig future. We succeeded in 1840, but
not without an effort; and I know that nothing but union, cordial,
sympathetic, fraternal union, can prevent the party that achieved that
success from renewed prostration. It is not,--I would say it in the
presence of the world,--it is not by premature and partial, by
proscriptive and denunciatory proceedings, that this great Whig family
can ever be kept together, or that Whig counsels can maintain their
ascendency. This is perfectly plain and obvious. It was a party, from
the first, made up of different opinions and principles, of gentlemen of
every political complexion, uniting to make a change in the
administration. They were men of strong State-rights principles, men of
strong federal principles, men of extreme tariff, and men of extreme
anti-tariff notions. What could be expected of such a party, unless
animated by a spirit of c