n
this conference it was agreed among them that it was best not to have a
provision for submitting the constitution to a vote of the people after
it should be formed. He then brings forward to show, and showing, as he
deemed, that Judge Douglas reported the bill back to the Senate with that
clause stricken out. He then shows that there was a new clause inserted
into the bill, which would in its nature prevent a reference of the
constitution back for a vote of the people,--if, indeed, upon a mere
silence in the law, it could be assumed that they had the right to vote
upon it. These are the general statements that he has made.

I propose to examine the points in Judge Douglas's speech in which he
attempts to answer that speech of Judge Trumbull's. When you come to
examine Judge Douglas's speech, you will find that the first point he
makes is:

"Suppose it were true that there was such a change in the bill, and that
I struck it out,--is that a proof of a plot to force a constitution upon
them against their will?"

His striking out such a provision, if there was such a one in the bill,
he argues, does not establish the proof that it was stricken out for the
purpose of robbing the people of that right. I would say, in the first
place, that that would be a most manifest reason for it. It is true, as
Judge Douglas states, that many Territorial bills have passed without
having such a provision in them. I believe it is true, though I am not
certain, that in some instances constitutions framed under such bills
have been submitted to a vote of the people with the law silent upon the
subject; but it does not appear that they once had their enabling acts
framed with an express provision for submitting the constitution to be
framed to a vote of the people, then that they were stricken out when
Congress did not mean to alter the effect of the law. That there have been
bills which never had the provision in, I do not question; but when was
that provision taken out of one that it was in? More especially does the
evidence tend to prove the proposition that Trumbull advanced, when
we remember that the provision was stricken out of the bill almost
simultaneously with the time that Bigler says there was a conference among
certain senators, and in which it was agreed that a bill should be passed
leaving that out. Judge Douglas, in answering Trumbull, omits to attend to
the testimony of Bigler, that there was a meeting in which it was agree