people.  I believe I may venture to say that Judge Douglas made some reply to this speech of Judge Trumbull’s, but he never noticed that part of it at all.  And so the thing passed by.  I think, then, the fact that Judge Trumbull offered no amendment does not throw much blame upon him; and if it did, it does not reach the question of fact as to what Judge Douglas was doing.  I repeat, that if Trumbull had himself been in the plot, it would not at all relieve the others who were in it from blame.  If I should be indicted for murder, and upon the trial it should be discovered that I had been implicated in that murder, but that the prosecuting witness was guilty too, that would not at all touch the question of my crime.  It would be no relief to my neck that they discovered this other man who charged the crime upon me to be guilty too.

Another one of the points Judge Douglas makes upon Judge Trumbull is, that when he spoke in Chicago he made his charge to rest upon the fact that the bill had the provision in it for submitting the constitution to a vote of the people when it went into his Judge Douglas’s hands, that it was missing when he reported it to the Senate, and that in a public speech he had subsequently said the alterations in the bill were made while it was in committee, and that they were made in consultation between him (Judge Douglas) and Toomb’s.  And Judge Douglas goes on to comment upon the fact of Trumbull’s adducing in his Alton speech the proposition that the bill not only came back with that proposition stricken out, but with another clause and another provision in it, saying that “until the complete execution of this Act there shall be no election in said Territory,”—­which, Trumbull argued, was not only taking the provision for submitting to a vote of the people out of the bill, but was adding an affirmative one, in that it prevented the people from exercising the right under a bill that was merely silent on the question.  Now, in regard to what he says, that Trumbull shifts the issue, that he shifts his ground,—­and I believe he uses the term that, “it being proven false, he has changed ground,” I call upon all of you, when you come to examine that portion of Trumbull’s speech (for it will make a part of mine), to examine whether Trumbull has shifted his ground or not.  I say he did not shift his ground, but that he brought forward his original charge and the evidence to sustain it yet more fully, but precisely as he originally made it.  Then, in addition thereto, he brought in a new piece of evidence.  He shifted no ground.  He brought no new piece of evidence inconsistent with his former testimony; but he brought a new piece, tending, as he thought, and as I think, to prove his proposition.  To illustrate:  A man brings an accusation against another, and on trial the man making the charge introduces A and B to prove the accusation.  At a second trial he introduces the same witnesses, who tell the same story as before, and a third witness, who tells the same thing, and in addition gives further testimony corroborative of the charge.  So with Trumbull.  There was no shifting of ground, nor inconsistency of testimony between the new piece of evidence and what he originally introduced.