What is
conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the
new and untried? We stick to, contend for, the identical old policy
on the point in controversy which was adopted by "our fathers who
framed the Government under which we live"; while you with one
accord reject, and scout, and spit upon that old policy, and insist
upon substituting something new. True, you disagree among yourselves
as to what that substitute shall be. You are divided on new
propositions and plans, but you are unanimous in rejecting and
denouncing the old policy of the fathers. Some of you are for
reviving the foreign slave trade; some for a Congressional
Slave-Code for the Territories; some for Congress forbidding the
Territories to prohibit Slavery within their limits; some for
maintaining Slavery in the Territories through the judiciary; some
for the "gur-reat pur-rinciple" that "if one man would enslave
another, no third man should object," fantastically called "Popular
Sovereignty"; but never a man among you in favor of federal
prohibition of slavery in federal territories, according to the
practice of "our fathers who framed the Government under which we
live." Not one of all your various plans can show a precedent or an
advocate in the century within which our Government originated.
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