eality instead, that the Supreme
Court has made Illinois a slave State. To meet and overthrow the power
of that dynasty is the work now before all those who would prevent that
consummation. That is what we have to do. How can we best do it?

There are those who denounce us openly to their own friends, and yet
whisper to us softly that Senator Douglas is the aptest instrument there
is with which to effect that object. They wish us to _infer_ all from
the fact that he now has a little quarrel with the present head of that
dynasty, and that he has regularly voted with us on a single point, upon
which he and we have never differed. They remind us that he is a great
man and that the largest of us are very small ones. Let this be granted.
But "a living dog is better than a dead lion." Judge Douglas, if not a
dead lion, for this work is at least a caged and toothless one. How can
he oppose the advances of slavery? He don't care anything about it. His
avowed mission is impressing the "public heart" to _care nothing about
it_. A leading Douglas Democratic newspaper thinks Douglas's superior
talent will be needed to resist the revival of the African slave-trade.
Does Douglas believe an effort to revive that trade is approaching? He
has not said so. Does he really think so? But if it is, how can he
resist it? For years he has laboured to prove it a sacred right of white
men to take negro slaves into the new territories. Can he possibly show
that it is a less sacred right to buy them where they can be bought
cheapest? And unquestionably they can be bought cheaper in Africa than
in Virginia. He has done all in his power to reduce the whole question
of slavery to one of a mere right of property: and, as such, how can he
oppose the foreign slave-trade?--how can he refuse that trade in that
property shall be "perfectly free," unless he does it as a protection to
home production? And as the home producers will probably not ask the
protection, he will be wholly without a ground of opposition.

Senator Douglas holds, we know, that a man may rightfully be wiser
to-day than he was yesterday--that he may rightfully change when he
finds himself wrong. But can we, for that reason, run ahead, and infer
that he will make any particular change, of which he himself has given
no intimation? Can we safely base our action upon any such vague
inference?

Now, as ever, I wish not to misrepresent Judge Douglas's position,
question his motives, or do a