Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 9.djvu/235

 LINCOLN wish us to Infer all, from the fact that he now has a little quarrel with the present head of the dynasty ; and that he has regularly voted with us on a single point, upon which he and we have never differed. They remind us that he is a great man and that the largest of us are very small ones. Let this be granted. ''But a living dog is better than a dead lion. ' ' Judge Douglas, if not a dead lion, for this work, is at least a caged and toothless one. How can he oppose the advance of slavery? He does not care anything about it. His avowed mission is impressing the ''public heart*' to care nothing about it. A leading Douglas Demo- cratic newspaper thinks Douglas's superior tal- ent will be needed to resist the revival of the African slave-trade. Does Douglas believe an effort to revive that trade is approaching? He has not said so. Does he really think so? But if it is, how can he resist it 1 For years he has labored to prove it a sacred right of white men to take negro slaves into the new Territories. Can he possibly show that it is less a sacred right to buy them where they can be bought cheapest? And unquestionably they can be bought cheaper in Africa than in Virginia. He has done all in his power to reduce the whole question of slavery to one of a mere right of property ; and as such, how can he oppose the foreign slave-trade? How can he refuse that trade in that ** property'' shall be ** perfectly free,*' unless lie does it as a proteetioii to the IX— IS 225