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