The appeal is withdrawn; but I believe I have the floor on the question. We have pending before us the Tax Bill, and during a day perhaps a dozen or twenty propositions are moved on that bill. According to the suggestion of the Senator from New York [Mr. CONKLING], one who had spoken on two of those propositions would be debarred from speaking on any of the others during that day. As a Senator suggests to me, if a Senator had spoken about salt or tea, then he could not speak on sugar, or the income question, or anything else. I believe the rule of the Senate will not compel us to any such absurdity. I do not like to take up the time of the Senate; and I should not speak now, except for my desire to bring home to the Senate once more the gravity of the question, and to introduce a new authority, which I had on my table, but which I forgot to use, when I was up before,--I mean the late Abraham Lincoln. He, too, had a great controversy in Illinois with a distinguished representative of the Democratic party (Mr. DOUGLAS) on the Declaration of Independence. Let Mr. Douglas state his position in his own words. He said:-- “I believe that this Government of ours was founded on the white basis. I believe that it was established by white men, by men of European birth, or descended of European races, for the benefit of white men and their posterity in all time to come. I do not believe that it was the design or intention of the signers of the Declaration of Independence or the framers of the Constitution to include negroes, Indians, or other inferior races, with white men, as citizens.”[151] Then, again, in another place, Mr. Douglas said:-- “The Declaration of Independence only included the white people of the United States.”[152] How like what we have heard in this Chamber on Saturday and to-day! Senators have been unconsciously repeating these exploded arguments of the late Mr. Douglas. How did Abraham Lincoln answer? In a speech at Springfield, while admitting that negroes are “not our equals in color,” this eminent citizen, afterward President, thus spoke for the comprehensive humanity of the Declaration:--