At the Whig state convention, held at Springfield, September 29th, 1847, Mr. Webster said he would consent to no extension of slavery. Are not the laws which I have just read a consent?--full consent? He claimed the Wilmot proviso as his “thunder,” and said it had been stolen from him. Whether stolen from him, or not, I do not decide. He certainly seems to have lost possession of it; for we now find him thundering on the other side;--yes, from the high Olympus to which the votes of Massachusetts had elevated him, he has hurled his bolts against the dearest interests of his benefactors. But it is said we have registered these acts of pro-slavery legislation, at the dictation of the south, in order to save the Union. When Governor Davis was once asked to surrender the rights of humanity to save the Union, he retorted with the question, “How many times have we got to save the Union?” If we yield to every threat of disunion, we shall have to save the Union whenever any factious and unprincipled member of it shall threaten resistance to the laws. Look at the present threat which has been made by Texas. What resources has she wherewith to oppose the general government? She has no funds except a school fund of $34,000, which her governor, in one of his late messages, declared to be inviolably devoted to education. To be sure, since this cry of rebellion has been raised, he has said that this fund, which could be diverted for no useful purpose, might be appropriated to the treasonable one of resistance. But look at the amount of this fund,--$34,000. Military men tell me it would not support a single regiment of mounted rangers more than a month; and all the more settled parts of Texas are at least one month’s marching distance from Santa Fe, which is the nearest point of attack. There was never any thing more ridiculous than the threats of Texas, that she will take armed possession of the eastern side of the Rio Grande, if it be not surrendered to her. She cannot even protect herself against the Indian tribes that roam through the regions lying between her and the people she threatens to subjugate. Will the disaffected states of the south help her by munitions, money, or men? The only states on which she could place any reliance are Mississippi and South Carolina. Could a military force be organized, and then marched nearly a thousand, or nearly fifteen hundred miles, across the country, to uphold the Texan banner on the borders of the Rio Grande? Were expeditions to be sent by sea, could not the mouth of the Mississippi, the harbor of Charleston, and that gateway of the Gulf of Mexico, which lies between the capes of Florida and the West India Islands; ay, the whole Texan coast itself, be blockaded and guarded, so as to make a hostile irruption into New Mexico impossible? Talk about Texan resistance to the government of these United States, my fellow-citizens; it is so ridiculous that