t 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." No matter in what shape it comes, whether
from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own
nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an
apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.
I was glad to express my gratitude at Quincy, and I re-express it here,
to Judge Douglas,--that he looks to no end of the institution of slavery.
That will help the people to see where the struggle really is. It will
hereafter place with us all men who really do wish the wrong may have
an end. And whenever we can get rid of the fog which obscures the real
question, when we can get Judge Douglas and his friends to avow a policy
looking to its perpetuation,--we can get out from among that class of men
and bring them to the side of those who treat it as a wrong. Then there
will soon be an end of it, and that end will be its "ultimate extinction."
Whenever the issue can be distinctly made, and all extraneous matter
thrown out so that men can fairly see the real difference between the
parties, this controversy will soon be settled, and it will be done
peaceably too. There will be no war, no violence. It will be placed again
where the wisest and best men of the world placed it. Brooks of South
Carolina once declared that when this Constitution was framed its framers
did not look to the institution existing until this day. When he said
this, I think he stated a fact that is fully borne out by the history of
the times. But he also said they were better and wiser men than the men of
these days, yet the men of these days had experience which they had not,
and by the invention of the cotton-gin it became a necessity in this
country that slavery should be perpetual. I now say that, willingly or
unwillingly--purposely or without purpose, Judge Douglas has been the
most prominent instrument in changing the position of the institution of
slavery,--which the fathers of the government expected to come to an end
ere this, and putting it upon Brooks's cotton-gin basis; placing it where
he openly confesses he has no desire there s