And now, if the Judge claims the benefit of this parable, let him repent.  Let him not come up here and say:  “I am the only just person; and you are the ninety-nine sinners!” Repentance before forgiveness is a provision of the Christian system, and on that condition alone will the Republicans grant his forgiveness.

How will he prove that we have ever occupied a different position in regard to the Lecompton Constitution or any principle in it?  He says he did not make his opposition on the ground as to whether it was a free or slave constitution, and he would have you understand that the Republicans made their opposition because it ultimately became a slave constitution.  To make proof in favor of himself on this point, he reminds us that he opposed Lecompton before the vote was taken declaring whether the State was to be free or slave.  But he forgets to say that our Republican Senator, Trumbull, made a speech against Lecompton even before he did.

Why did he oppose it?  Partly, as he declares, because the members of the convention who framed it were not fairly elected by the people; that the people were not allowed to vote unless they had been registered; and that the people of whole counties, some instances, were not registered.  For these reasons he declares the Constitution was not an emanation, in any true sense, from the people.  He also has an additional objection as to the mode of submitting the Constitution back to the people.  But bearing on the question of whether the delegates were fairly elected, a speech of his, made something more than twelve months ago, from this stand, becomes important.  It was made a little while before the election of the delegates who made Lecompton.  In that speech he declared there was every reason to hope and believe the election would be fair; and if any one failed to vote, it would be his own culpable fault.

I, a few days after, made a sort of answer to that speech.  In that answer I made, substantially, the very argument with which he combated his Lecompton adversaries in the Senate last winter.  I pointed to the facts that the people could not vote without being registered, and that the time for registering had gone by.  I commented on it as wonderful that Judge Douglas could be ignorant of these facts which every one else in the nation so well knew.

I now pass from popular sovereignty and Lecompton.  I may have occasion to refer to one or both.

When he was preparing his plan of campaign, Napoleon-like, in New York, as appears by two speeches I have heard him deliver since his arrival in Illinois, he gave special attention to a speech of mine, delivered here on the 16th of June last.  He says that he carefully read that speech.  He told us that at Chicago a week ago last night and he repeated it at Bloomington last night.  Doubtless, he repeated it again to-day, though I did not hear him.  In the first two places—­Chicago and Bloomington I heard him; to-day I did not.