e of equality, slaves should be
allowed to go into a new Territory, like other property. This is
strictly logical if there is no difference between it and other
property.... But if you insist that one is wrong and the other right,
there is no use to institute a comparison between right and wrong....
That is the real issue. That is the issue that will continue in this
country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be
silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two principles, right
and wrong, throughout the world. They are the two principles that have
stood face to face from the beginning of time, and will ever continue to
struggle. The one is the common right of humanity, and the other the
divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it
develops itself. It is the same spirit that says: 'You work and toil and
earn bread, and I'll eat it.'" "I ask you if it is not a false
philosophy? Is it not a false statesmanship that undertakes to build up
a system of policy upon the basis of caring nothing about _the very
thing that everybody does care the most about_?"

We cannot leave these speeches without a word concerning their literary
quality. In them we might have looked for vigor that would be a little
uncouth, wit that would be often coarse, a logic generally sound but
always clumsy,--in a word, tolerably good substance and very poor form.
We are surprised, then, to find many and high excellences in art. As it
is with Bacon's essays, so it is with these speeches: the more
attentively they are read the more striking appears the closeness of
their texture both in logic and in language. Clear thought is accurately
expressed. Each sentence has its special errand, and each word its
individual importance. There is never either too much or too little. The
work is done with clean precision and no waste. Nowhere does one pause
to seek a meaning or to recover a connection; and an effort to make out
a syllabus shows that the most condensed statement has already been
used. There are scintillations of wit and humor, but they are not very
numerous. When Lincoln was urged to adopt a more popular style, he
replied: "The occasion is too serious; the issues are too grave. I do
not seek applause, or to amuse the people, but to convince them." This
spirit was upon him from the beginning to the end. Had he been
addressing a bench of judges, subject to a close limitation of minutes,
he would have won c