The Bedford Gazette

ELOQUENT SENTIMENTS.

At the recent Tippecanoe Battle Ground Convention of the friends of Buchanan and Breckinridge, that "old man eloquent," Gen. Cass, spoke as follows:

General Cass being introduced to the assemblage was received with hearty applause. He said that he felt it good to be there. So great an outburst of the popular heart he had scarcely expected to see. Behold your country's flag which here and on many another blood-stained field our fathers gallantly defended. Be you faithful to them, and defend the flag of the Union, which you have inherited from your ancestors with a fidelity equal to theirs.

My countrymen, the Union is in imminent danger If I had uttered such a sentiment as this at the commencement of my political career I would have had no hearers. But times have greatly changed in my day, and now you listen because you know that my language is that of soberness and truth. Years ago when I visited this spot, having come down the Wabash in a bark canoe, the silence was supreme and impressive: but now I behold about me a vast concourse of earnest and excited citizens. This change is but typical of what has occurred over the broad lands of all the Northwestern States.

No idle curiosity has called you forth to-day. You have come to manifest that attachment to the Union and the Union party which animated our patriotic forefathers, and made them rather bite the dust than see that Union dishonored or endangered by foreign and domestic foes. - (Great applause.)

I have just come from the halls of legislation, and if you had been there and witnessed what I saw and what I heard, not one among you could think the cry of the Union is in danger one of false alarm. No! you would have seen the wheels of Government blocked by a party, and for no better or other reason than that the army was sought to be paid for enforcing the laws of the land.

This is the fourteenth time that you have been called upon to elect a man to preside over the destinies of the United States the freest and happiest Government on the Globe. You are called upon to choose one of two candidates, and in making that choice you should bear in mind that all your governmental prosperity and happiness you owe to that Democratic party whose opponents have been in power but one year in four. (Great applause)

Many of our people seem to ignore the existence of a rule, a golden rule, which says, "mind your own business." It is a most excellent rule and almost worthy of being the thirteenth commandment. By its recognition our fathers prospered, and our country has prospered, but a new sect has arisen whose motto seems to embrace the minding of other people's business as well as their own.

But what is the cause of all this angry dissention and strife. Why we are told it is the Nebraska bill. And what is that? Nothing in the world more or less than the extension of the same right to the people of Nebraska and Kansas, the same right which you, the people of Indiana, enjoy.

Is there one here who objects to this? Who thinks that Massachusetts ought to control the local institutions in Kansas? [Voices "No," "not one."] I know there is not my friends. If any, let him leave the assemblage. I don't want to talk to such. Let him go to Massachusetts, That is the place for him. What is there in a man that renders him less capable of self-government in a Territory than in a State? Nothing in the world.

The General alluded to the late House of Representatives, saying that, though they tried hard to starve the army, whose only crime was that it had endeavored to enforce the laws, they took good care to vote a handsome appropriation to themselves.

The General concluded in language nearly as follows:

I am an old man, having passed the age of three score years and ten, and I tell you, aye, repeat it again and again, that the Union is in danger! Let me entreat you by the blood of your forefathers, shed on this and on scores of other battle-fields - by your present prosperity - by all your hopes for the future - by all that you hold most sacred and dear - hold on to the Union - hold on to it in life and almost in death! It has made us prosperous and happy, and placed our country's fame high among the nations of the earth. If the Union is lost, all is lost. Anarchy first will ensue, then despotism. Oh, my friends, beware - beware! - Think, pause, and again think, before giving countenance to those whose patriotism embraces but a segment of the country. We have here to-day a son of Henry Clay who now sleeps in his grave. The son reminds me of his father, my friend, and as noble a patriot as ever breathed. It is to me a source of great consolation, that though we differed on almost every political question, I never spoke a disrespectful word of him. He was my friend at his death. I attended his dying couch, and caught almost the last accents that fell from his lips. He said that Mr. Fillmore was his first choice for the Presidency, but if he could not be elected, he preferred to see the Whigs unite upon a Union Democrat. These were almost his last words, my friends, and most earnestly would I commend them to your consideration.