THE

The conductors of the Whig Review have heretofore expressed their own opinions, decidedly and without reservation, in regard to the extension of slavery, and other questions akin to, and springing out of, it. Any farther expression on their part would be merely to repeat what has been already said, or to fortify their own position with new arguments. The ground which they have taken they esteem to be strictly Whig and constitutional, and therefore intermediate, and conciliatory, between the extreme positions of the North and South. The question of the extension of slavery is simply a controversy between a certain class of propertyholders and the rest of the nation, and tends to confound all other distinctions of party. Opinion, on the one side, is arrayed against interest and opinion on the other, and a contest is excited in which argument ends almost of necessity in recrimination. Opinion will not yield when interest does not compel it, and interest is always ready to fortify itself with opinion.

That there has been of late a great improvement, however, in the public mind, in regard to the right method of conducting this dangerous controversy, we have evidence in a prospectus, lately issued by Southern representatives, Whig and Democratic, at Washington, of a new paper to be estab

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lished by them, for the defence of their institutions and their constitutional rights. The entire subject is to be thrown open to discussion, opinions are to be sifted and controverted, and of course reason and argument are to take the place of passion and recrimination.

In view of this marked improvement in public sentiment, the conductors of the Whig Review will feel themselves justified in persevering in the plan which they have now, for some time, adhered to, of giving the sentiments and arguments of both sides in regard to Slavery, without reserve. They have admitted, and shall continue to admit, articles from Northern and Southern pens indifferently, and biographies of statesmen representing constituencies of both extremes. No adequate or useful accounts of political actions or opinions can be given from a merely neutral point of view. Keeping therefore within the limits of courtesy, and of the doctrines of the National Whig Party, the Review will in future not feel itself bound to exclude sound Whig articles, advocating the views of either extreme. Our readers will then have before them a better chart of public opinion, by which they can mark out for themselves such a course as may seem to them to be the right one.