The principles which caused this union are already widely received, and will be proclaimed by this vast assembly. Look at them. They are frankly and explicitly expressed. They were solemnly and deliberately considered by a large committee, and enthusiastically adopted in the Convention. They propose not only to guard the Territories against Slavery, but to relieve the National Government from all responsibility therefor everywhere within the sphere of its constitutional powers. On the subject of Slavery they adopt substantially the prayer of Franklin, who by formal petition called upon the first Congress under the Constitution to "step to the very verge of the power vested in them _for discouraging_ every species of traffic in the persons of our fellow-men."[272] They propose to bring back the government to the truths of the Declaration of Independence and to the principles of the fathers, so that it shall be administered no longer in the spirit of Slavery, but in the spirit of Freedom. [272] Annals of Congress, 1st Cong. 2d Sess., 1198. Other important subjects received attention: cheap postage for the people; retrenchment of the national patronage; the abolition of unnecessary offices; the election of civil officers by the people in all practicable cases; improvement of rivers and harbors; free grant to actual settlers of the public lands; and, lastly, payment of the national debt by means of a tariff. But these matters are all treated as subordinate to the primal principle of opposition to Slavery and the Slave Power. No longer will banks and tariffs occupy the foremost place, and, sounding always with the chink of dollars and cents, give their tone to the policy of the country. Henceforward PROTECTION TO MAN will be the true AMERICAN SYSTEM. The candidates selected as exponents of these principles have claims upon your support, in forgetfulness of all former differences of opinion. They were brought forward, not because of _the Past_, but _the Present_; I may add, they were sustained by many persons in the Convention _notwithstanding_ the Past: Martin Van Buren, the New York Democrat, and Charles Francis Adams, the Massachusetts Whig. But these designations can no longer denote different principles. Those to whom they are applied, whether Democrat or Whig, concur in making opposition to Slavery and the Slave Power the paramount principle of political action. The designations may now be interchanged: Mr. Adams may be hailed as a New York Democrat, and Mr. Van Buren as a Massachusetts Whig.