The plainest print cannot be read through a gold eagle; and it will be ever hard to find many men who will send a slave to Liberia, and pay his passage, while they can send him to a new country—­Kansas, for instance—­and sell him for fifteen hundred dollars, and the rise.

TO WILLIAM GRIMES.

Springfield, Illinois, August, 1857

Dear sir:—­Yours of the 14th is received, and I am much obliged for the legal information you give.

You can scarcely be more anxious than I that the next election in Iowa should result in favor of the Republicans.  I lost nearly all the working part of last year, giving my time to the canvass; and I am altogether too poor to lose two years together.  I am engaged in a suit in the United States Court at Chicago, in which the Rock Island Bridge Company is a party.  The trial is to commence on the 8th of September, and probably will last two or three weeks.  During the trial it is not improbable that all hands may come over and take a look at the bridge, and, if it were possible to make it hit right, I could then speak at Davenport.  My courts go right on without cessation till late in November.  Write me again, pointing out the more striking points of difference between your old and new constitutions, and also whether Democratic and Republican party lines were drawn in the adoption of it, and which were for and which were against it.  If, by possibility, I could get over among you it might be of some advantage to know these things in advance.

Yours very truly,
A. Lincoln.

ARGUMENT IN THE ROCK ISLAND BRIDGE CASE.

(From the Daily Press of Chicago, Sept. 24, 1857.)

Hurd et al. vs Railroad Bridge Co.

United States Circuit Court, Hon. John McLean, Presiding Judge.

13th day, Tuesday, Sept. 22, 1857.

Mr. A. Lincoln addressed the jury.  He said he did not purpose to assail anybody, that he expected to grow earnest as he proceeded but not ill-natured.  “There is some conflict of testimony in the case,” he said, “but one quarter of such a number of witnesses seldom agree, and even if all were on one side some discrepancy might be expected.  We are to try and reconcile them, and to believe that they are not intentionally erroneous as long as we can.”  He had no prejudice, he said, against steamboats or steamboat men nor any against St. Louis, for he supposed they went about this matter as other people would do in their situation.  “St. Louis,” he continued, “as a commercial place may desire that this bridge should not stand, as it is adverse to her commerce, diverting a portion of it from the river; and it may be that she supposes that the additional cost of railroad transportation upon the productions of Iowa will force them to go to St. Louis if this bridge is removed.  The meetings in St. Louis