Judge Douglas at that time. Harris and
Douglas were both in Springfield when the Convention was in session,
and although they both left before the fraud appeared in the Register,
subsequent events show that they have both had their eyes fixed upon that
Convention.

The fraud having been apparently successful upon the occasion, both Harris
and Douglas have more than once since then been attempting to put it to
new uses. As the fisherman's wife, whose drowned husband was brought home
with his body full of eels, said when she was asked what was to be done
with him, "Take the eels out and set him again," so Harris and Douglas
have shown a disposition to take the eels out of that stale fraud by which
they gained Harris's election, and set the fraud again more than once. On
the 9th of July, 1856, Douglas attempted a repetition of it upon Trumbull
on the floor of the Senate of the United States, as will appear from the
appendix of the Congressional Globe of that date.

On the 9th of August, Harris attempted it again upon Norton in the House
of Representatives, as will appear by the same documents,--the appendix
to the Congressional Globe of that date. On the 21st of August last, all
three--Lanphier, Douglas, and Harris--reattempted it upon me at Ottawa.
It has been clung to and played out again and again as an exceedingly high
trump by this blessed trio. And now that it has been discovered publicly
to be a fraud we find that Judge Douglas manifests no surprise at it at
all. He makes no complaint of Lanphier, who must have known it to be a
fraud from the beginning. He, Lanphier, and Harris are just as cozy now
and just as active in the concoction of new schemes as they were before
the general discovery of this fraud. Now, all this is very natural if they
are all alike guilty in that fraud, and it is very unnatural if any one
of them is innocent. Lanphier perhaps insists that the rule of honor
among thieves does not quite require him to take all upon himself,
and consequently my friend Judge Douglas finds it difficult to make a
satisfactory report upon his investigation. But meanwhile the three are
agreed that each is "a most honorable man."

Judge Douglas requires an indorsement of his truth and honor by a
re-election to the United States Senate, and he makes and reports against
me and against Judge Trumbull, day after day, charges which we know to
be utterly untrue, without for a moment seeming to think that this one
unexpla