There were many persons in September, 1841, who found great fault with my remaining in the President’s Cabinet.  You know, Gentlemen, that twenty years of honest, and not altogether undistinguished service in the Whig cause, did not save me from an outpouring of wrath, which seldom proceeds from Whig pens and Whig tongues against anybody.  I am, Gentlemen, a little hard to coax, but as to being driven, that is out of the question.  I chose to trust my own judgment, and thinking I was at a post where I was in the service of the country, and could do it good, I stayed there.  And I leave it to you to-day to say, I leave it to my country to say, whether the country would have been better off if I had left also.  I have no attachment to office.  I have tasted of its sweets, but I have tasted of its bitterness.  I am content with what I have achieved; I am more ready to rest satisfied with what is gained, than to run the risk of doubtful efforts for new acquisition.

I suppose I ought to pause here. (Cries of “Go on!”) I ought, perhaps, to allude to nothing more, and I will not allude to any thing further than it may be supposed to concern myself, directly or by implication.  Gentlemen, and Mr. Mayor, a most respectable convention of Whig delegates met in this place a few days since, and passed very important resolutions.  There is no set of gentlemen in the Commonwealth, so far as I know them, who have more of my respect and regard.  They are Whigs, but they are no better Whigs than I am.  They have served the country in the Whig ranks; so have I, quite as long as most of them, though perhaps with less ability and success.  Their resolutions on political subjects, as representing the Whigs of the State, are entitled to respect, so far as they were authorized to express opinion on those subjects, and no further.  They were sent hither, as I supposed, to agree upon candidates for the offices of Governor and Lieutenant-Governor for the support of the Whigs of Massachusetts; and if they had any authority to speak in the name of the Whigs of Massachusetts to any other purport or intent, I have not been informed of it.  I feel very little disturbed by any of those proceedings, of whatever nature; but some of them appear to me to have been inconsiderate and hasty, and their point and bearing can hardly be mistaken.  I notice, among others, a declaration made, in behalf of all the Whigs of this Commonwealth, of “a full and final separation from the President of the United States.”  If those gentlemen saw fit to express their own sentiments to that extent, there was no objection.  Whigs speak their sentiments everywhere; but whether they may assume a privilege to speak for others on a point on which those others have not given them authority, is another question.  I am a Whig, I always have been a Whig, and I always will be one; and if there are any who would turn me out of the pale of that communion, let them see who will get out first.  I am a Massachusetts Whig,