At all events I think the above has been prescribed by the competent authority.

Springfield, Jany. 6, 1859.

A. Lincoln.

TO M. W. DELAHAY.

Springfield, March 4, 1859.

M. W. Delahay, Esq.

My dear sir:  Your second letter in relation to my being with you at your Republican convention was duly received.  It is not at hand just now, but I have the impression from it that the convention was to be at Leavenworth; but day before yesterday a friend handed me a letter from Judge M. F. Caraway, in which he also expresses a wish for me to come, and he fixes the place at Ossawatomie.  This I believe is off of the river, and will require more time and labor to get to it.  It will push me hard to get there without injury to my own business; but I shall try to do it, though I am not yet quite certain I shall succeed.

I should like to know before coming, that while some of you wish me to come, there may not be others who would quite as lief I would stay away.  Write me again.

Yours as ever,

A. Lincoln.

TO W. M. MORRIS.

Springfield, March 28, 1859.

W. M. Morris, Esq.

Dear sir:—­Your kind note inviting me to deliver a lecture at Galesburg is received.  I regret to say I cannot do so now; I must stick to the courts awhile.  I read a sort of lecture to three different audiences during the last month and this; but I did so under circumstances which made it a waste of no time whatever.

Yours very truly,

TO H. L. PIERCE AND OTHERS.

Springfield, Illinois, April 6, 1859.

Gentlemen:—­Your kind note inviting me to attend a festival in Boston, on the 28th instant, in honor of the birthday of Thomas Jefferson, was duly received.  My engagements are such that I cannot attend.

Bearing in mind that about seventy years ago two great political parties were first formed in this country, that Thomas Jefferson was the head of one of them and Boston the headquarters of the other, it is both curious and interesting that those supposed to descend politically from the party opposed to Jefferson should now be celebrating his birthday in their own original seat of empire, while those claiming political descent from him have nearly ceased to breathe his name everywhere.

Remembering, too, that the Jefferson party was formed upon its supposed superior devotion to the personal rights of men, holding the rights of property to be secondary only, and greatly inferior, and assuming that the so-called Democracy of to-day are the Jefferson, and their opponents the anti-Jefferson, party, it will be equally interesting to note how completely the two have changed hands as to the principle upon which they were originally supposed to be divided.  The Democracy of to-day hold the liberty of one man to be absolutely nothing, when in conflict with another man’s right of property; Republicans, on the contrary, are for both the man and the dollar, but in case of conflict the man before the dollar.