Under the practical administration of the Constitution of the United States, there cannot be a great range of personal choice in regard to the candidate for the Presidency.  In order that their votes may be effective, men must give them for some one of those who are prominently before the public.  This is the necessary result of our forms of government and of the provisions of the Constitution.  The people are therefore brought sometimes to the necessity of choosing between candidates neither of whom would be their original, personal choice.

Now, what is the contingency?  What is the alternative presented to the Whigs of Massachusetts?  In my judgment, fellow-citizens, it is simply this; the question is between General Taylor and General Cass.  And that is the only question.  I am no more skilled to foresee political occurrences than others.  I judge only for myself.  But, in my opinion, there is not the least probability of any other result than the choice of General Taylor or General Cass.  I know that the enthusiasm of a new-formed party, that the popularity of a new-formed name, without communicating any new-formed idea, may lead men to think that the sky is to fall, and that larks are suddenly to be taken.  I entertain no such expectations.  I speak without disrespect of the Free Soil party.  I have read their platform, and though I think there are some unsound places in it, I can stand on it pretty well.  But I see nothing in it both new and valuable.  “What is valuable is not new, and what is new is not valuable.”  If the term Free Soil party, or Free Soil men, designate those who are fixed, and unalterably fixed, in favor of the restriction of slavery, are so to-day and were so yesterday, and have been so for some time, then I hold myself to be as good a Free Soil man as any of the Buffalo Convention.  I pray to know who is to put beneath my feet a freer soil than that upon which I have stood ever since I have been in public life?  I pray to know who is to make my lips freer than they always have been, or to inspire into my breast a more resolute and fixed determination to resist the advances and encroachments of the slave power, than has inhabited it since I for the first time opened my mouth in the councils of the country?  The gentlemen at Buffalo have placed at the head of their party Mr. Van Buren, a gentleman for whom I have all the respect that I ought to entertain for one with whom I have been associated, in some degree, in public life for many years, and who has held the highest offices in the country.  But really, speaking for myself, if I were to express confidence in Mr. Van Buren and his politics on any question, and most especially this very question of slavery, I think the scene would border upon the ludicrous, if not upon the contemptible.  I never proposed any thing in my life of a general and public nature, that Mr. Van Buren did not oppose.  Nor has it happened to me to support any important measure proposed