Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/550

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of the different pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or too few—not omitting even scaffolding—or, if a single piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted and prepared yet to bring such piece in—in such a case, we find it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn up before the first blow was struck.

To this Judge Douglas replied:

Douglas also denied the conspiracy charge. Not content with Douglas' denial, Lincoln renewed the charge, and while admitting that he did not "know" submitted the evidence upon which he "believed" it to be true. Likewise, he objected to "the sacredness that Judge Douglas throws around this decision," and said:

He also asked Douglas whether he would acquiesce in a second Dred Scott decision forbidding the free states from excluding slavery from their limits, and stated that Douglas himself had approved of Jackson's refusal to be bound by a Supreme Court decision touching the constitutionality of the United States Bank. He went even farther and asserted that Douglas was once in favor of "adding five new Judges" to the Supreme Court of Illinois in order to reverse a decision of that court, and that "it ended in the judge's sitting down on that very bench as one of the five new judges to break down the four old ones." In short, "Judge Douglas is for Supreme Court decisions when he likes and against them when he does not like them."