Such precisely is our condition. The important sentiment of hostility to the Slave Power, to the extension of Slavery, and to its longer continuance under the Constitution wherever the National Government is responsible for it, though recognized by individuals, and by a small, but respectable, political organization, was never till now put forth as the paramount principle of a large and national party. It is true, indeed, that here is no new idea. It is as old as the Revolution,--as old as Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin; but it is an idea neglected by both the great parties which have recently swayed the country. Were it recognized by either, there would be no occasion for the new party whose existence has so auspiciously begun. No person is so hardy as to assert that the present Democratic party embodies this idea. But there are partisans, who, in disregard of well-known facts, claim it as the property of the late Whig party, even in its present metamorphosis into the Taylor faction. It is sometimes proclaimed as their "thunder." How is this? It is well known that the Whigs of Massachusetts, in local conventions, and also in formal legislative proceedings, have avowed hostility to the Slave Power, to the extension of Slavery, and to its longer continuance under the Constitution, wherever the National Government is responsible for it; but the _National_ Whig party, or what Mr. Webster has called "the _united_ Whig party of the United States," has never recognized any such principles. Search its history, and you will find that it has been false to them. _As a party_, it has never sustained any measure for the abolition of Slavery in the District of Columbia. On the contrary, it has discountenanced all proceedings in this direction. General Harrison, the only President it has succeeded in electing, covertly took ground against it in his Inaugural Message, and Mr. Clay, the acknowledged representative of the party, expressed himself to the same effect, with a warmth which better became a better cause. Nor did either of these Whig statesmen admit, what Mr. Van Buren more than once distinctly declared, that Congress possessed the constitutional power to abolish Slavery in the District. That part of our principles, then, which touches this topic, has formed no portion of the _National_ Whig doctrines. The claim to proprietorship in the principle of opposition to the extension of Slavery is equally vain. Florida and Arkansas have both been admitted as States with slaveholding Constitutions, and the _National_ Whig party made no opposition.