"Q. 5. 'I desire him to answer whether he stands pledged to the prohibition of the slave-trade between the different States?' "A. I do not stand pledged to the prohibition of the slave-trade between the different States. "Q. 6. 'I desire to know whether he stands pledged to prohibit slavery in all the territories of the United States, north as well as south of the Missouri Compromise line?' "A. I am impliedly, if not expressly, pledged to a belief in the _right_ and _duty_ of Congress to prohibit slavery in all the United States territories. [Great applause.] "Q. 7. 'I desire him to answer whether he is opposed to the acquisition of any new territory unless slavery is first prohibited therein?' "A. I am not generally opposed to honest acquisition of territory; and, in any given case, I would or would not oppose such acquisition, accordingly as I might think such acquisition would or would not agitate the slavery question among ourselves. "Now, my friends, it will be perceived upon an examination of these questions and answers, that so far I have only answered that I was not _pledged_ to this, that, or the other. The judge has not framed his interrogatories to ask me any thing more than this, and I have answered in strict accordance with the interrogatories, and have answered truly that I am not _pledged_ at all upon any of the points to which I have answered. But I am not disposed to hang upon the exact form of his interrogatories. I am rather disposed to take up at least some of these questions, and state what I really think upon them. "As to the first one, in regard to the Fugitive-Slave Law, I have never hesitated to say, and I do not now hesitate to say, that I think, under the Constitution of the United States, the people of the Southern States are entitled to a congressional slave law. Having said that, I have had nothing to say in regard to the existing Fugitive-Slave Law, further than that I think it should have been framed so as to be free from some of the objections that pertain to it, without lessening its efficiency. And inasmuch as we are not now in an agitation in regard to an alteration or modification of that law, I would not be the man to introduce it as a new subject of agitation upon the general question of slavery.