the country where, in the opinion of the people of his section,
everybody was supposed to be instructed and wise. But he had devoted his
attention to the question of the coming Presidential election, and was
not unwilling to exchange with all whom he might the ideas to which he
had arrived. He then began to show the fallacy of some of the arguments
against Gen. Taylor, making his chief theme the fashionable statement of
all those who oppose him ("the old Locofocos as well as the new") that he
has no principles, and that the Whig party have abandoned their principles
by adopting him as their candidate. He maintained that Gen. Taylor
occupied a high and unexceptionable Whig ground, and took for his first
instance and proof of this the statement in the Allison letter--with
regard to the bank, tariff, rivers and harbors, etc.--that the will of the
people should produce its own results, without executive influence. The
principle that the people should do what--under the Constitution--as they
please, is a Whig principle. All that Gen. Taylor is not only to consent
to, but appeal to the people to judge and act for themselves. And this was
no new doctrine for Whigs. It was the "platform" on which they had
fought all their battles, the resistance of executive influence, and the
principle of enabling the people to frame the government according to
their will. Gen. Taylor consents to be the candidate, and to assist the
people to do what they think to be their duty, and think to be best in
their national affairs, but because he don't want to tell what we ought to
do, he is accused of having no principles. The Whigs here maintained for
years that neither the influence, the duress, or the prohibition of the
executive should control the legitimately expressed will of the people;
and now that, on that very ground, Gen. Taylor says that he should use the
power given him by the people to do, to the best of his judgment, the will
of the people, he is accused of want of principle, and of inconsistency in
position.

Mr. Lincoln proceeded to examine the absurdity of an attempt to make a
platform or creed for a national party, to all parts of which all
must consent and agree, when it was clearly the intention and the true
philosophy of our government, that in Congress all opinions and principles
should be represented, and that when the wisdom of all had been compared
and united, the will of the majority should be carried out. On this ground
h