nted nor allowed to vote, I pointed out
in a speech a year ago, which I hold in my hand now, that no fair chance
was to be given to the people. ["Read it, Read it."] I shall not waste
your time by trying to read it. ["Read it, Read it."] Gentlemen, reading
from speeches is a very tedious business, particularly for an old man that
has to put on spectacles, and more so if the man be so tall that he has to
bend over to the light.

A little more, now, as to this matter of popular sovereignty and the
Lecompton Constitution. The Lecompton Constitution, as the Judge tells us,
was defeated. The defeat of it was a good thing or it was not. He thinks
the defeat of it was a good thing, and so do I, and we agree in that. Who
defeated it?

[A voice: Judge Douglas.]

Yes, he furnished himself, and if you suppose he controlled the other
Democrats that went with him, he furnished three votes; while the
Republicans furnished twenty.

That is what he did to defeat it. In the House of Representatives he and
his friends furnished some twenty votes, and the Republicans furnished
ninety odd. Now, who was it that did the work?

[A voice: Douglas.]

Why, yes, Douglas did it! To be sure he did.

Let us, however, put that proposition another way. The Republicans could
not have done it without Judge Douglas. Could he have done it without
them? Which could have come the nearest to doing it without the other?

[A voice: Who killed the bill?]

[Another voice: Douglas.]

Ground was taken against it by the Republicans long before Douglas did it.
The proportion of opposition to that measure is about five to one.

[A voice: Why don't they come out on it?]

You don't know what you are talking about, my friend. I am quite willing
to answer any gentleman in the crowd who asks an intelligent question.

Now, who in all this country has ever found any of our friends of Judge
Douglas's way of thinking, and who have acted upon this main question,
that has ever thought of uttering a word in behalf of Judge Trumbull?

[A voice: We have.]

I defy you to show a printed resolution passed in a Democratic meeting--I
take it upon myself to defy any man to show a printed resolution of a
Democratic meeting, large or small--in favor of Judge Trumbull, or any of
the five to one Republicans who beat that bill. Everything must be for the
Democrats! They did everything, and the five to the one that really did
the thing they snub over, and they do not seem to