as a reasoner to others who hold the same views, but then he was more unscrupulous, more facetious and with his sneers he mixed up a good deal of humor. His awkward gesticulations, the ludicrous management of his voice and the comical expression of his countenance, all conspired to make his hearers laugh at the mere anticipation of the joke before it appeared. But enough concerning the speaker; let us examine his arguments.
General Taylor, he argued, has principles, though he has not given expression to them on the Tariff, Bank and other questions of policy. This, however, is in direct contradiction of Taylor, himself, who in his letter to Delany writes, ``As regards the second and third inquiries (about a bank and tariff), I am not prepared to answer them. I could only do so after investigating them. I am no politician; near forty years of my life have been passed on the Western frontier and in the Indian count[r]y.'' The speaker next discussed the veto question and said that Taylor was the first Whig candidate that had come fully up to the Whig platform in this point, because unlike all other candidates before him he had not even claimed the right to advise Congress on matters of policy. The proper limitation of the veto, he contended, was the Whig platform itself, and General Taylor by his equivocal silence had come up to it better than the great parent of Whig principles---Henry Clay. He did not know that General Taylor had professed that he would not veto the Wilmot proviso, but believed that he would not, because General Taylor had promised not to veto any measure unless it was unconstitutional or passed in haste and acknowledged that to be constitutional which had been established by long usage and acquiesced in by the people. As the constitutionality of the Wilmot Proviso he said ``had never been disputed.'' it was therefore acquiesced in by the people and consequently Taylor was bound not to veto it.
He subsequently admitted in speaking of Cass, that in the Nicholson letter the constitutional power of Congress to exclude slavery from any territory in the Union was denied. Yet he seemed to forget this when he said that the constitutionality of the Proviso had never been disputed. He seemed to be entirely ignorant that every propagandist of slavery in existence, with John C. Calhoun at their head, claimed the right, under the Constitution, and independent of Congress, to carry their ``property'' into any part of the United States territory and there to hold it.
Calhoun said in the Senate that when the South consented to the Missouri Compromise the rights of the South granted by the Constitution were given up but belonged to the South the same as