e.
If the door is opened to the full discussion of the question of slavery, abstractly as a matter of policy —the proposition to introduce it into this country, I hope will be fully dis cussed, and the effects of slavery as exemplified in the three hundred years of our experience of it upon this continent, laid bare and open. I should prefer not to speak at all upon the question, but if I shall speak I do not desire to be cramped with your 40-minute rules. No man, sir, if he had the intellect of an angel and the concentration of a Webster could stand up here and do that question justice in 40 min utes time. He can but in that time state simple, naked propo sitions upon that question. Now, sir, suppose, for example, I should make a speech of 40 minutes duration here. I could say all I expect to say upon any other proposition contained in the constitution but this, in 40 minutes. I will suppose that I am about to address the house upon that question, and have my documents before me, and I arouse my memory. I desire to say the most cogent things upon that subject, and I should know, notwithstanding, that I must trot over the course in 40 minutes. Why, sir, I could not begin to have a good sweat on by that time. Some men can not get their minds off freely until they get warmed up. I am among that number. And right in the midst of my progress the hammer of the speaker falls, and I am cut short. As well to be cut off at the knees. I would rather not speak at all. Or if my friend, the distinguished gentleman from Marion (Mr. Williams) was entertaining the convention upon this ques tion, I should regret to see him in the midst of one of his clear, logical speeches, cut off. The country does not demand it of me that I should be deprived of one-half of a mental feast here, at the bidding of some men who can not "talk." 4 "The Plains Across!" By E. L . Applegate E. L . Applegate, who was later commissioner of immigration, was on the losing Republican ticket as state treasurer in the campaign
