ter], as often as his hasty journey is arrested by a spontaneous gathering. And when you hear a subterranean, spectral voice cry out, “my great principle—non-intervention!” that is the dead squatter sovereign atoning for the evil deeds he committed in his bodily existence. [Prolonged laughter and cheer.] Not long ago he haunted the railroad crossings and clambakes of New England; then the cotton-fields of the South—the ghostly apparition was last seen in this neighborhood.[1] [Prolonged laughter and cheers.]
Where is that formidable party tyrant whose wishes once were commands; who broke down sacred compromises with a mere stroke of his finger; whose very nod made the heads of those who displeased him fly into the basket; whose very whims were tests of Democracy? Where is he who once, like Macbeth, thought himself invulnerable by any man “who was of woman born;” invincible,
——“Until
Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane hill
Should come against him.”
Like Macbeth, he has believed the fiends
“That paltered with him in a double sense,”
and there he stands, tied to the stake of his nomination.
“He cannot fly,
And, bear-like, must he fight his course.”[Laughter.]
But as Birnam Wood marched to Dunsinane, so the very fence-rails of Illinois are rushing down upon him [tremendous laughter and cheers], and, like Macduff, there rises against him the spirit of free labor, whose
- ↑ Mr. Douglas had made a speech in New York a day or two previous.
