At the Whig Convention in Philadelphia two different efforts were made to obtain the recognition of this principle; but it was laid upon the table, or stifled amidst unseemly noises and cries of "Kick it out!" This same Convention nominated for the Presidency General Taylor, who is justly supposed, by his position, to be against the Wilmot Proviso, and who has been advocated recently by Mr. Berrien, a leading slaveholding Whig, remarkable for hostility to the Proviso, on the ground, thus candidly expressed, that "the Southern man who is farthest from us is nearer to us than any Northern man can be,--that General Taylor is identified with us in feeling and interest, was born and educated in a slaveholding State, is himself a slaveholder,--that his slave property constitutes the means of support to himself and family,--_that he cannot desert us_, without sacrificing his interest, his principles, the habits and feelings of his life,--and that with him, therefore, our institutions are safe." In sustaining such a candidate, while professing to be a Free-Soil party, the Whigs imitate those barbarians who elevate in their temple a Pagan idol, while professing to serve, in Gospel light, the only true God. There are leading supporters of General Taylor, not slaveholders, but acknowledged Whigs, who frankly disclaim the Wilmot Proviso. Mr. Clayton, of Delaware, is reported as declaring to the Senate, July 5, 1848,--"No man has a right to say that the Wilmot Proviso is a Whig principle, or that its opposite is a Whig principle. We repudiate the question altogether, as a political question. Neither the one side nor the other of the question forms any part of our platform." And my friend Mr. Choate, the accomplished orator, is reported as saying, in one of his recent speeches: "On all the great questions of the day BUT JUST SLAVERY, we mean to remain the same party of Whigs, one and indivisible, from Maine to Louisiana; upon this question alone _we always differ from the Whigs of the South_, and on that one we propose simply to vote them down." I conclude, then, that the principle of opposition to the extension of Slavery, like that of opposition to its longer continuance under the Constitution, wherever the National Government is responsible for it, is not recognized by the national political combination which supports General Taylor. None will say that this combination will oppose the Slave Power, of which their candidate is a component part.