With regard to existing laws, some alterations are thought to be necessary.  Many respectable men have suggested that our estray laws—­the law respecting the issuing of executions, the road law, and some others, are deficient in their present form, and require alterations.  But considering the great probability that the framers of those laws were wiser than myself, I should prefer [not] meddling with them, unless they were first attacked by others, in which case I should feel it both a privilege and a duty to take that stand, which in my view, might tend most to the advancement of justice.

But, fellow-citizens, I shall conclude.—­Considering the great degree of modesty which should always attend youth, it is probable I have already been more presuming than becomes me.  However, upon the subjects of which I have treated, I have spoken as I thought.  I may be wrong in regard to any or all of them; but, holding it a sound maxim, that it is better to be only sometimes right, than at all times wrong, so soon as I discover my opinions to be erroneous, I shall be ready to renounce them.

Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition.  Whether it be true or not, I can say, for one, that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem.  How far I shall succeed in gratifying this ambition, is yet to be developed.  I am young and unknown to many of you.  I was born and have ever remained in the most humble walks of life.  I have no wealthy or popular relations to recommend me.  My case is thrown exclusively upon the independent voters of this county, and if elected they will have conferred a favor upon me, for which I shall be unremitting in my labors to compensate.  But, if the good people in their wisdom shall see fit to keep me in the background, I have been too familiar with disappointments to be very much chagrined.

Your friend and fellow-citizen,
A. Lincoln.

New Salem, March 9, 1832.

THE PERPETUATION OF OUR POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS, JANUARY 27, 1837

In the great journal of things happening under the sun, we, the American People, find our account running under date of the nineteenth century of the Christian era.—­We find ourselves in the peaceful possession of the fairest portion of the earth, as regards extent of territory, fertility of soil, and salubrity of climate.  We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty than any of which the history of former times tells us.  We, when mounting the stage of existence, found ourselves the legal inheritors of these fundamental blessings.  We toiled not in the acquirement or establishment of them—­they are a legacy bequeathed us by a once hardy, brave, and patriotic, but now lamented and departed, race