Webster, the leader of the compromisers, had not even secured a nomination, but General Scott was the Whig candidate; while William H. Seward, at the head of the Antislavery Whigs, had at least the satisfaction of seeing that, amid the dissolving elements of the Whig party, the antislavery sentiment was gaining strength day by day.

Happily this was not to be; for at this crisis Henry Clay, the "Compromiser," the "Pacificator," the "Peacemaker," as he was fondly called, came forward with a plan of settlement.

In the one case, the compromiser rejects the highest truth, or dissembles his own acceptance of it.

If the maxim of the compromiser were sound, it ought to be capable of universal application.

Suppose, then, that each man on whom in turn the new ideas dawned wore to borrow the compromiser's plea and imitate his example.

Perhaps the compromiser shrinks, not because he fears to march alone, but because he thinks that the time has not yet come for the progressive idea which he has made his own, and for whose triumph one day he confidently hopes.

The compromiser who blinds himself to all those points, and acts just as if the truth were not in him, does for ideas with which he agrees, the very thing which the acute persecutor does for ideas which he dislikeshe extinguishes beginnings and kills the germs.

The timid compromiser on the one hand, and the advocate of coercive restriction on the other, are equally the victims of a superfluous apprehension.