Permit me to say a word personal to myself. For eleven years, I have been estranged from all political excitements. During this whole period, I have attended no political meeting of any kind whatever. I have contented myself with the right of private judgment and the right of voting, though it has usually so happened that my official duties have demanded my absence from home at the time of the fall elections. I have deemed this abstinence from _actively_ mingling in political contests both a matter of duty towards opposing political parties, and a proper means of subserving the best interests of the cause in which I had embarked. I hoped too, by so doing, to assist in rearing men even better than those now belonging to any party. The nature of my duties also, and all my intercourse and associations, have attracted me towards whatever is worthy and beneficent in all parties, rather than towards what is peculiar to any one. Not believing in political pledges, I should have had the honor to decline giving any to you, had you not had the first and greater honor of asking none from me. After what I have said above in favor of liberty for all mankind, it would be a strange contradiction did I consent to be myself a slave of party. The hands which you raised in behalf of yourselves and your constituents, when you voted for the noble sentiments contained in the resolution I have quoted, could never degrade themselves by forging a fetter for the free mind of another, or fastening one upon it; and the hand with which I have penned my hearty response to those sentiments can never stretch itself out to take a fetter on. Should your nomination, therefore, be accepted and be successful, it must be with the explicit understanding between us that I shall always be open to receive the advice of my constituents, shall always welcome their counsel, always be most grateful for their suggestions, but that, in the last resort, my own sense of duty must be the only arbiter. Should differences arise, the law opens an honorable escape for both parties,--declination on my part, substitution on yours.