with this persistent insisting on a story that I know to be utterly without truth.  It used to be a fashion amongst men that when a charge was made, some sort of proof was brought forward to establish it, and if no proof was found to exist, the charge was dropped.  I don’t know how to meet this kind of an argument.  I don’t want to have a fight with Judge Douglas, and I have no way of making an argument up into the consistency of a corn-cob and stopping his mouth with it.  All I can do is—­good-humoredly—­to say that, from the beginning to the end of all that story about a bargain between Judge Trumbull and myself, there is not a word of truth in it.  I can only ask him to show some sort of evidence of the truth of his story.  He brings forward here and reads from what he contends is a speech by James H. Matheny, charging such a bargain between Trumbull and myself.  My own opinion is that Matheny did do some such immoral thing as to tell a story that he knew nothing about.  I believe he did.  I contradicted it instantly, and it has been contradicted by Judge Trumbull, while nobody has produced any proof, because there is none.  Now, whether the speech which the Judge brings forward here is really the one Matheny made, I do not know, and I hope the Judge will pardon me for doubting the genuineness of this document, since his production of those Springfield resolutions at Ottawa.  I do not wish to dwell at any great length upon this matter.  I can say nothing when a long story like this is told, except it is not true, and demand that he who insists upon it shall produce some proof.  That is all any man can do, and I leave it in that way, for I know of no other way of dealing with it.

[In an argument on the lines of:  “Yes, you did.—­No, I did not.”  It bears on the former to prove his point, not on the negative to “prove” that he did not—­even if he easily can do so.]

The Judge has gone over a long account of the old Whig and Democratic parties, and it connects itself with this charge against Trumbull and myself.  He says that they agreed upon a compromise in regard to the slavery question in 1850; that in a National Democratic Convention resolutions were passed to abide by that compromise as a finality upon the slavery question.  He also says that the Whig party in National Convention agreed to abide by and regard as a finality the Compromise of 1850.  I understand the Judge to be altogether right about that; I understand that part of the history of the country as stated by him to be correct I recollect that I, as a member of that party, acquiesced in that compromise.  I recollect in the Presidential election which followed, when we had General Scott up for the presidency, Judge Douglas was around berating us Whigs as Abolitionists, precisely as he does to-day,—­not a bit of difference.  I have often heard him.  We could do nothing when the old Whig party was alive that was not Abolitionism, but it has got an extremely good name since it has passed away.