Well, now, gentlemen, is not that very alarming?  Just to think of it! right at the outset of his canvass, I, a poor, kind, amiable, intelligent gentleman,—­I am to be slain in this way!  Why, my friend the Judge is not only, as it turns out, not a dead lion, nor even a living one,—­he is the rugged Russian Bear!

But if they will have it—­for he says that we deny it—­that there is any such alliance, as he says there is,—­and I don’t propose hanging very much upon this question of veracity,—­but if he will have it that there is such an alliance, that the Administration men and we are allied, and we stand in the attitude of English, French, and Turk, he occupying the position of the Russian, in that case I beg that he will indulge us while we barely suggest to him that these allies took Sebastopol.

Gentlemen, only a few more words as to this alliance.  For my part, I have to say that whether there be such an alliance depends, so far as I know, upon what may be a right definition of the term alliance.  If for the Republican party to see the other great party to which they are opposed divided among themselves, and not try to stop the division, and rather be glad of it,—­if that is an alliance, I confess I am in; but if it is meant to be said that the Republicans had formed an alliance going beyond that, by which there is contribution of money or sacrifice of principle on the one side or the other, so far as the Republican party is concerned,—­if there be any such thing, I protest that I neither know anything of it, nor do I believe it.  I will, however, say,—­as I think this branch of the argument is lugged in,—­I would before I leave it state, for the benefit of those concerned, that one of those same Buchanan men did once tell me of an argument that he made for his opposition to Judge Douglas.  He said that a friend of our Senator Douglas had been talking to him, and had, among other things, said to him: 

“...why, you don’t want to beat Douglas?” “Yes,” said he, “I do want to beat him, and I will tell you why.  I believe his original Nebraska Bill was right in the abstract, but it was wrong in the time that it was brought forward.  It was wrong in the application to a Territory in regard to which the question had been settled; it was brought forward at a time when nobody asked him; it was tendered to the South when the South had not asked for it, but when they could not well refuse it; and for this same reason he forced that question upon our party.  It has sunk the best men all over the nation, everywhere; and now, when our President, struggling with the difficulties of this man’s getting up, has reached the very hardest point to turn in the case, he deserts him and I am for putting him where he will trouble us no more.”

Now, gentlemen, that is not my argument; that is not my argument at all.  I have only been stating to you the argument of a Buchanan man.  You will judge if there is any force in it.