the understanding of others, saying what I think it proves, but giving
you the means of judging whether it proves it or not. This is precisely
what I have done. I have not placed it upon my ipse dixit at all. On this
occasion, I wish to recall his attention to a piece of evidence which I
brought forward at Ottawa on Saturday, showing that he had made
substantially the same charge against substantially the same persons,
excluding his dear self from the category. I ask him to give some
attention to the evidence which I brought forward that he himself had
discovered a "fatal blow being struck" against the right of the people to
exclude slavery from their limits, which fatal blow he assumed as in
evidence in an article in the Washington Union, published "by authority."
I ask by whose authority? He discovers a similar or identical provision
in the Lecompton Constitution. Made by whom? The framers of that
Constitution. Advocated by whom? By all the members of the party in the
nation, who advocated the introduction of Kansas into the Union under the
Lecompton Constitution. I have asked his attention to the evidence that
he arrayed to prove that such a fatal blow was being struck, and to the
facts which he brought forward in support of that charge,--being
identical with the one which he thinks so villainous in me. He pointed
it, not at a newspaper editor merely, but at the President and his
Cabinet and the members of Congress advocating the Lecompton Constitution
and those framing that instrument. I must again be permitted to remind
him that although my ipse dixit may not be as great as his, yet it
somewhat reduces the force of his calling my attention to the enormity of
my making a like charge against him.

Go on, Judge Douglas.