On many accounts, I have the extremest reluctance to appear before the public on the present occasion. My views, on some vital questions, differ most materially from those of gentlemen for whom I have felt the profoundest respect; and for some of whom I cherish the strongest personal attachment. But I feel, on the other hand, that my constituents, having intrusted to me some of their most precious interests, are entitled to know my “views and opinions” respecting the hopes and the dangers that encompass them. I shall not, therefore, take the responsibility of declining. I will premise further, that my relations to political parties, for many years past, have left me as free from all partisan bias “as the lot of humanity will admit.” For twelve years I held an office whose duties required me to abstain from all active coöperation in political conflicts; and that duty was so religiously fulfilled, that, to my knowledge, I was never charged with its violation. During the Presidential contest of 1848, those obligations of neutrality still rested upon me. For a year afterwards, I was not called upon to do any official act displeasing to any party amongst us. This interval I employed in forming the best opinion I could of public men and measures, and their influence upon the moral and industrial interests of the country. I had long entertained most decided convictions in favor of protecting American labor, in favor of cheap postage, and of security to the lives and property of our fellow-citizens engaged in commerce. But a new question had arisen,--the great question of freedom or slavery in our recently acquired territories,--and this question I deemed, for the time being, to be, though not exclusive of others, yet paramount to them. Or rather, I saw that nothing could be so favorable to all the last-named interests, as the proper adjustment of the first. He who would provide for the welfare of mankind, must first provide for their liberty. Sympathizing, then, on different points with different parties, but exclusively bound to none, I stood, in reference to the great question of territorial freedom or slavery, in the position of the _true_ mother in the litigation before Solomon, preferring that the object of my love should be spared in the hands of any one, rather than perish in my own.