statement of all those who oppose him ("the old Locofocos as well as the new”) that he has no principles, and that the Whig party have abandoned their principles by adopting him as their candidate.  He maintained that Gen. Taylor occupied a high and unexceptionable Whig ground, and took for his first instance and proof of this the statement in the Allison letter—­with regard to the bank, tariff, rivers and harbors, etc.—­that the will of the people should produce its own results, without executive influence.  The principle that the people should do what—­under the Constitution—­as they please, is a Whig principle.  All that Gen. Taylor is not only to consent to, but appeal to the people to judge and act for themselves.  And this was no new doctrine for Whigs.  It was the “platform” on which they had fought all their battles, the resistance of executive influence, and the principle of enabling the people to frame the government according to their will.  Gen. Taylor consents to be the candidate, and to assist the people to do what they think to be their duty, and think to be best in their national affairs, but because he don’t want to tell what we ought to do, he is accused of having no principles.  The Whigs here maintained for years that neither the influence, the duress, or the prohibition of the executive should control the legitimately expressed will of the people; and now that, on that very ground, Gen. Taylor says that he should use the power given him by the people to do, to the best of his judgment, the will of the people, he is accused of want of principle, and of inconsistency in position.

Mr. Lincoln proceeded to examine the absurdity of an attempt to make a platform or creed for a national party, to all parts of which all must consent and agree, when it was clearly the intention and the true philosophy of our government, that in Congress all opinions and principles should be represented, and that when the wisdom of all had been compared and united, the will of the majority should be carried out.  On this ground he conceived (and the audience seemed to go with him) that Gen. Taylor held correct, sound republican principles.

Mr. Lincoln then passed to the subject of slavery in the States, saying that the people of Illinois agreed entirely with the people of Massachusetts on this subject, except perhaps that they did not keep so constantly thinking about it.  All agreed that slavery was an evil, but that we were not responsible for it and cannot affect it in States of this Union where we do not live.  But the question of the extension of slavery to new territories of this country is a part of our responsibility and care, and is under our control.  In opposition to this Mr. L. believed that the self-named “Free Soil” party was far behind the Whigs.  Both parties opposed the extension.  As he understood it the new party had no principle except this opposition.  If their platform held any other, it was in such a general