before. I don't want any harsh language indulged in, but I do not know
how to deal with this persistent insisting on a story that I know to be
utterly without truth. It used to be a fashion amongst men that when a
charge was made, some sort of proof was brought forward to establish it,
and if no proof was found to exist, the charge was dropped. I don't know
how to meet this kind of an argument. I don't want to have a fight with
Judge Douglas, and I have no way of making an argument up into the
consistency of a corn-cob and stopping his mouth with it. All I can do
is--good-humoredly--to say that, from the beginning to the end of all
that story about a bargain between Judge Trumbull and myself, there is
not a word of truth in it. I can only ask him to show some sort of
evidence of the truth of his story. He brings forward here and reads from
what he contends is a speech by James H. Matheny, charging such a bargain
between Trumbull and myself. My own opinion is that Matheny did do some
such immoral thing as to tell a story that he knew nothing about. I
believe he did. I contradicted it instantly, and it has been contradicted
by Judge Trumbull, while nobody has produced any proof, because there is
none. Now, whether the speech which the Judge brings forward here is
really the one Matheny made, I do not know, and I hope the Judge will
pardon me for doubting the genuineness of this document, since his
production of those Springfield resolutions at Ottawa. I do not wish to
dwell at any great length upon this matter. I can say nothing when a long
story like this is told, except it is not true, and demand that he who
insists upon it shall produce some proof. That is all any man can do, and
I leave it in that way, for I know of no other way of dealing with it.

[In an argument on the lines of: "Yes, you did.--No, I did not." It bears
on the former to prove his point, not on the negative to "prove" that he
did not--even if he easily can do so.]