his use of the veto power.
He would make it a rule of political action for the People and all the
departments of the Government. I would not. By resisting it as a
political rule, I disturb no right of property, create no disorder,
excite no mobs."

After quoting from a letter of Mr. Jefferson (vol. vii., p. 177, of his
Correspondence,) in which he held that "to consider the judges as the
ultimate arbiters of all Constitutional questions," is "a very dangerous
doctrine indeed; and one which would place us under the despotism of an
Oligarchy," Mr. Lincoln continued: "Let us go a little further. You
remember we once had a National Bank. Some one owed the Bank a debt; he
was sued, and sought to avoid payment on the ground that the Bank was
unconstitutional. The case went to the Supreme Court, and therein it
was decided that the Bank was Constitutional. The whole Democratic
party revolted against that decision. General Jackson himself asserted
that he, as President, would not be bound to hold a National Bank to be
Constitutional, even though the Court had decided it to be so. He fell
in, precisely, with the view of Mr. Jefferson, and acted upon it under
his official oath, in vetoing a charter for a National Bank.

"The declaration that Congress does not possess this Constitutional
power to charter a Bank, has gone into the Democratic platform, at their
National Conventions, and was brought forward and reaffirmed in their
last Convention at Cincinnati. They have contended for that
declaration, in the very teeth of the Supreme Court, for more than a
quarter of a century. In fact, they have reduced the decision to an
absolute nullity. That decision, I repeat, is repudiated in the
Cincinnati platform; and still, as if to show that effrontery can go no
further, Judge Douglas vaunts in the very speeches in which he denounces
me for opposing the Dred Scott decision, that he stands on the
Cincinnati platform.

"Now, I wish to know what the Judge can charge upon me, with respect to
decisions of the Supreme Court, which does not lie in all its length,
breadth, and proportions, at his own door? The plain truth is simply
this: Judge Douglas is for Supreme Court decisions when he likes, and
against them when he does not like them. He is for the Dred Scott
decision because it tends to Nationalize Slavery--because it is a part
of the original combination for that object. It so happens, singularly
enough, that I never stoo