if living. I regard him as more nearly resembling Silas Wright in the general character of his views on public questions than any living public man. While, therefore, I repeat that if we can have Judge McLean's name for the Vice-Presidency I would rather take the ticket as it would then stand--Martin Van Buren and John McLean--than any other, you will not wonder that I regret that the action of the convention at Utica has interposed an obstacle to a different arrangement. Whether the obstacle is insuperable you are a far better judge than I am. If it be, then, we must take the Utica nomination, supply the Vice-Presidential vacancy and make the best fight we can. "You will have observed the difficulty suggested by the _National Era_ growing out of the expressions in your father's letter, in relation to slavery in the District of Columbia; and you are doubtless aware that all that part of the letter in reference to the course of his administration on the subject of slavery is very distasteful to almost all anti-slavery men, whether Whig, Democratic, or Liberty. "I wish that part of the letter could have been omitted. It does no good to revive the past. Our business is with the present and the future. Your remarks in your speech at Genesee on the 20th of June are full of truth. The Free-Territories question, in discussion, must bring up the whole slavery question inevitably. Our contest is with the slave power, and it will break us down unless we break it down. The people will not stop with the exclusion of slavery from Territories: they will demand its complete denationalization. Now many understand Mr. Van Buren's letter, so far as it touches upon slavery in the District, as a reiteration of his pledge to veto a bill for the abolition of slavery there if enacted by Congress. I do not myself so understand it. I cannot believe that at the present day and under present circumstances, when a strong anti-slavery sentiment exists in Maryland and Virginia, which would be vastly strengthened by such a measure--so strengthened, indeed, that those States would by it be converted into free Territory States--that he would interpose the slightest obstacle to its adoption. I cannot doubt that, on the contrary, he would give it every favor consistent with the proper discharge of his function as President. "So many, however, take a different view from mine that it is highly desirable, in the event that M. Van Buren is to be the nominee of the Buffalo convention, to have all doubt on this matter removed, so that he may be received and understood everywhere as a true representative of the movement.