in the Illinois State Register could not have been the result of accident, as the proceedings of that meeting bore unmistakable evidence of being done by a man who knew it was a forgery; that it was a publication partly taken from the real proceedings of the Convention, and partly from the proceedings of a convention at another place, which showed that he had the real proceedings before him, and taking one part of the resolutions, he threw out another part, and substituted false and fraudulent ones in their stead.  I pointed that out to him, and also that his friend Lanphier, who was editor of the Register at that time and now is, must have known how it was done.  Now, whether he did it, or got some friend to do it for him, I could not tell, but he certainly knew all about it.  I pointed out to Judge Douglas that in his Freeport speech he had promised to investigate that matter.  Does he now say that he did not make that promise?  I have a right to ask why he did not keep it.  I call upon him to tell here to-day why he did not keep that promise?  That fraud has been traced up so that it lies between him, Harris, and Lanphier.  There is little room for escape for Lanphier.  Lanphier is doing the Judge good service, and Douglas desires his word to be taken for the truth.  He desires Lanphier to be taken as authority in what he states in his newspaper.  He desires Harris to be taken as a man of vast credibility; and when this thing lies among them, they will not press it to show where the guilt really belongs.  Now, as he has said that he would investigate it, and implied that he would tell us the result of his investigation, I demand of him to tell why he did not investigate it, if he did not; and if he did, why he won’t tell the result.  I call upon him for that.

This is the third time that Judge Douglas has assumed that he learned about these resolutions by Harris’s attempting to use them against Norton on the floor of Congress.  I tell Judge Douglas the public records of the country show that he himself attempted it upon Trumbull a month before Harris tried them on Norton; that Harris had the opportunity of learning it from him, rather than he from Harris.  I now ask his attention to that part of the record on the case.  My friends, I am not disposed to detain you longer in regard to that matter.

I am told that I still have five minutes left.  There is another matter I wish to call attention to.  He says, when he discovered there was a mistake in that case, he came forward magnanimously, without my calling his attention to it, and explained it.  I will tell you how he became so magnanimous.  When the newspapers of our side had discovered and published it, and put it beyond his power to deny it, then he came forward and made a virtue of necessity by acknowledging it.  Now he argues that all the point there was in those resolutions, although never passed at Springfield, is retained by their being passed at other localities.  Is that true?