parties of the North, he said, ought at once to strike this whole subject from their respective issues. He was not for any amalgamation of parties, or for the formation of any new one: the two great parties had united for the settlement of this great question, and they could now revive the old creeds, return to their old positions, and so spare America that last calamity, the formation of parties according to geographical lines. The conscience of the community, moreover, is bound to discourage and modify the further agitation of the subject of slavery, in the spirit in which, thus far, that agitation has been carried on. It is a great error to suppose that conscience or philanthropy requires the constant agitation of this topic. We of the North have nothing whatever to do with slavery in the Southern States, for we have solemnly covenanted with them that we will not interfere with it, and that we will perform certain duties growing out of it. Those duties are obligatory upon us, and no pretense of a higher law can absolve us from them. These positions were presented by Mr. Choate with all his accustomed strength, and with even more than the warmth of feeling and profusion of illustration which distinguish all his efforts. Mr. WEBSTER wrote a letter in reply to an invitation to attend the great Union meeting at Staunton, Va., approving most heartily of the objects of the proposed meeting, and assuring them, of his hearty sympathy and his unchangeable purpose to co-operate with them and other good men in upholding the honor of the States, and the Constitution of the Government. Political martyrdom, he declares, would be preferable to beholding the voluntary dismemberment of this glorious Republic. "It is better to die while the honor of the country is untarnished, and the flag of the Union still flying over our heads, than to live to behold that honor gone forever, and that flag prostrate in the dust." He assures them, from personal observation at the North, that through the masses of the Northern people the general feeling and the great cry is, for the Union, and for its preservation: and, "while there prevails a general purpose to maintain the Union as it is, that purpose embraces, as its just and necessary means, a firm resolution of supporting the rights of all the States, precisely as they stand guaranteed and secured by the Constitution. And you may depend upon it," he adds, "that every provision in that instrument in favor of the rights of Virginia and the other Southern States, and every constitutional act of Congress, passed to uphold and enforce those rights, will be upheld and maintained not only by the power of the law, but also by the prevailing influence of public opinion. Accidents may occur to defeat the execution of a law in a particular instance; misguided men may, it is possible, sometimes enable others to elude the claims of justice and the rights founded in solemn constitutional compact, but, on the whole, and in the end, the