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to sustain it yet more fully, but precisely as he originally made it.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 inconsi