And yet, in the face of all this experience, showing, first, the necessity of Prohibition as a safeguard to the Territories, and, secondly, its immeasurable advantages, you are now called to abandon the early policy of the Republic, to turn your back upon this policy as irrational and unwise, and to adopt a new pretension, with a plausible name, which, in the only instance where it has been tried, produced discord, strife, and blood. You are called to give up the old Aladdin’s Lamp of magical power, filling the land with infinite treasures and the true nobility of Freedom, and to take in exchange a new patent article now hawked about the streets of Worcester.
If this recent pretension, in the name of Popular Sovereignty, were merely an idea and nothing more, coined in the brain of an ingenious theorist, but not pressed persistently at all times into practical application, it might be left with kindred errors to pass away quietly into the limbo of things lost on earth, as described by Milton:--
“then reliques, beads, Indulgences, dispenses, pardons, bulls, The sport of winds.”
Such a pretension, espoused with ardor, as a practical rule, must naturally exercise a disturbing influence. You have not forgotten its influence on General Cass, who, yielding to it, violated the instructions of his State and voted against the Prohibition. You all know its influence on Mr. Douglas. In the name of this pretension he overturned the time-honored Prohibition of Slavery in the Missouri Territory, and delivered over Kansas to a conflict where fraud, rapine, and murder stalked with impunity. Afterward, in the name of this pretension, he sought to arrest all action by Congress for the relief of the settlers there. And ever since he has made this pretension a plain “dodge,” in order to avoid the urgent question: Are you for Freedom, or are you for Slavery? on which every citizen ought to say plainly, “Yea” or “Nay.”
It has not been the lot of your Representative to play a part so conspicuous as that of Mr. Douglas. But this pretension has changed his course hardly less than it has varied the course of the Presidential candidate, driving him into acts which only his large ingenuity in “making the worse appear the better reason” can save from an outburst of universal and indignant condemnation. And now, as I touch briefly on these acts, let me say that I do it most reluctantly, most painfully, and only in obedience to the absolute exigencies of this discussion, that you may truly understand the character of the pretension on which you are to pass judgment at the polls.