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 agreed they should so frame the bill that there should be no submission of the constitution to a vote of the people.  The Judge does not notice this part of it.  If you take this as one piece of evidence, and then ascertain that simultaneously Judge Douglas struck out a provision that did require it to be submitted, and put the two together, I think it will make a pretty fair show of proof that Judge Douglas did, as Trumbull says, enter into a plot to put in force a constitution for Kansas, without giving the people any opportunity of voting upon it.

But I must hurry on.  The next proposition that Judge Douglas puts is this: 

“But upon examination it turns out that the Toombs bill never did contain a clause requiring the constitution to be submitted.”

This is a mere question of fact, and can be determined by evidence.  I only want to ask this question:  Why did not Judge Douglas say that these words were not stricken out of the Toomb’s bill, or this bill from which it is alleged the provision was stricken out,—­a bill which goes by the name of Toomb’s, because he originally brought it forward?  I ask why, if the Judge wanted to make a direct issue with Trumbull, did he not take the exact proposition Trumbull made in his speech, and say it was not stricken out?  Trumbull has given the exact words that he says were in the Toomb’s bill, and he alleges that when the bill came back, they were stricken out.  Judge Douglas does not say that the words which Trumbull says were stricken out were not so stricken out, but he says there was no provision in the Toomb’s bill to submit the constitution to a vote of the people.  We see at once that he is merely making an issue upon the meaning of the words.  He has not undertaken to say that Trumbull tells a lie about these words being stricken out, but he is really, when pushed up to it, only taking an issue upon the meaning of the words.  Now, then, if there be any issue upon the meaning of the words, or if there be upon the question of fact as to whether these words were stricken out, I have before me what I suppose to be a genuine copy of the Toomb’s bill, in which it can be shown that the words Trumbull says were in it were, in fact, originally there.  If there be any dispute upon the fact, I have got the documents here to show they were there.  If there be any controversy upon the sense of the words,—­whether these words which were stricken out really constituted a provision for submitting the matter to a vote of the people,—­as that is a matter of argument, I think I may as well use Trumbull’s own argument.  He says that the proposition is in these words: