This is Trumbull’s argument.  Now, Judge Douglas does not meet the charge at all, but he stands up and says there was no such proposition in that bill for submitting the constitution to be framed to a vote of the people.  Trumbull admits that the language is not a direct provision for submitting it, but it is a provision necessarily implied from another provision.  He asks you how it is possible to ratify the land proposition at the election for the adoption of the constitution, if there was no election to be held for the adoption of the constitution.  And he goes on to show that it is not any less a law because the provision is put in that indirect shape than it would be if it were put directly.  But I presume I have said enough to draw attention to this point, and I pass it by also.

Another one of the points that Judge Douglas makes upon Trumbull, and at very great length, is, that Trumbull, while the bill was pending, said in a speech in the Senate that he supposed the constitution to be made would have to be submitted to the people.  He asks, if Trumbull thought so then, what ground is there for anybody thinking otherwise now?  Fellow-citizens, this much may be said in reply:  That bill had been in the hands of a party to which Trumbull did not belong.  It had been in the hands of the committee at the head of which Judge Douglas stood.  Trumbull perhaps had a printed copy of the original Toomb’s bill.  I have not the evidence on that point except a sort of inference I draw from the general course of business there.  What alterations, or what provisions in the way of altering, were going on in committee, Trumbull had no means of knowing, until the altered bill was reported back.  Soon afterwards, when it was reported back, there was a discussion over it, and perhaps Trumbull in reading it hastily in the altered form did not perceive all the bearings of the alterations.  He was hastily borne into the debate, and it does not follow that because there was something in it Trumbull did not perceive, that something did not exist.  More than this, is it true that what Trumbull did can have any effect on what Douglas did?  Suppose Trumbull had been in the plot with these other men, would that let Douglas out of it?  Would it exonerate Douglas that Trumbull did n’t then perceive he was in the plot?  He also asks the question:  Why did n’t Trumbull propose to amend the bill, if he thought it needed any amendment?  Why, I believe that everything Judge Trumbull had proposed, particularly in connection with this question of Kansas and Nebraska, since he had been on the floor of the Senate, had been promptly voted down by Judge Douglas and his friends.  He had no promise that an amendment offered by him to anything on this subject would receive the slightest consideration.  Judge Trumbull did bring to the notice of the Senate at that time the fact that there was no provision for submitting the constitution about to be made for the people of Kansas to a vote of the