at least up to 1838, was the development of the natural resources of the State.  These were great.  It was natural that railways, canals and other public works to develop them should be pushed forward at the public cost.  Other new countries since, with less excuse because with greater warning from experience, have plunged in this matter, and, though the Governor protested, the Illinois Legislature, Whigs and Democrats, Lincoln and every one else, plunged gaily, so that, during the collapse which followed, Illinois, though, like Lincoln himself, it paid its debts in the end, was driven in 1840 to suspend interest payments for several years.

Very little is recorded of Lincoln’s legislative doings.  What is related chiefly exhibits his delight in the game of negotiation and combination by which he and the other members for his county, together known as “the Long Nine,” advanced the particular projects which pleased their constituents or struck their own fancy.  Thus he early had a hand in the removal of the capital from Vandalia to Springfield in his own county.  The map of Illinois suggests that Springfield was a better site for the purpose than Vandalia and at least as good as Jacksonville or Peoria or any of its other competitors.  Of his few recorded speeches one concerns a proposed inquiry into some alleged impropriety in the allotment of shares in the State Bank.  It is certainly the speech of a bold man; it argues with remarkable directness that whereas a committee of prominent citizens which had already inquired into this matter consisted of men of known honesty, the proposed committee of the Legislators, whom he was addressing, would consist of men who, for all he knew, might be honest, and, for all he knew, might not.

The Federal politics of this time, though Lincoln played an active local part in the campaigns of the Whig party, concern us little.  The Whigs, to whom he did subordinate service, were, as has been said, an unlucky party.  In 1840, in the reaction which extreme commercial depression created against the previously omnipotent Democrats, the Whig candidate for the Presidency was successful.  This was General Harrison, a respected soldier of the last war, who was glorified as a sort of Cincinnatus and elected after an outburst of enthusiastic tomfoolery such as never before or since rejoiced the American people.  But President Harrison had hardly been in office a month when he died.  Some say he was worried to death by office seekers, but a more prosaic cause, pneumonia, can also be alleged.  It is satisfactory that this good man’s grandson worthily filled his office forty-eight years after, but his immediate successor was of course the Vice-President, Tyler, chosen as an influential opponent of the last Democrat Presidents, but not because he agreed with the Whigs.  Cultivated but narrow-minded, highly independent and wholly perverse, he satisfied no aspiration of the Whigs and paved the way effectually for the Democrat who succeeded him.