almost as a unit in favor of the internal-improvement system, in return for which the active supporters of that system were to vote for Springfield to be the seat of government. Thus it was made to cost the State about six millions of dollars to remove the seat of government from Vandalia to Springfield, half of which sum would have purchased all the real estate in that town at three prices; and thus by log-rolling on the canal measure; by multiplying railroads; by terminating three railroads at Alton, that Alton might become a great city in opposition to St. Louis; by distributing money to some of the counties to be wasted by the county commissioners; and by giving the seat of government to Springfield,--was the whole State bought up, and bribed to approve the most senseless and disastrous policy which ever crippled the energies of a growing country." 1 1 Ford's History of Illinois. Enumerating the gentlemen who voted for this combination of evils,--among them Stephen A. Douglas, John A. McClernand, James Shields, and Abraham Lincoln,--and reciting the high places of honor and trust to which most of them have since attained, Gov. Ford pronounces "all of them spared monuments of popular wrath, evincing how safe it is to a politician, but how disastrous it may be to the country, to keep along with the present fervor of the people." "It was a maxim with many politicians just to keep along even with the humor of the people, right or wrong;" and this maxim Mr. Lincoln held then, as ever since, in very high estimation. But the "humor" of his constituents was not only intensely favorable to the new scheme of internal improvements: it was most decidedly their "humor" to have the capital at Springfield, and to make a great man of the legislator who should take it there. Mr. Lincoln was doubtless thoroughly convinced that the popular view of all these matters was the right one; but, even if he had been unhappily afflicted with individual scruples of his own, he would have deemed it but simple duty to obey the almost unanimous voice of his constituency. He thought he never could serve them better than by giving them just what they wanted; and that to collect the will of his people, and register it by his own vote, was the first and leading obligation of a representative. It happened that on this occasion the popular feeling fell in very pleasantly with his young dream of rivalling the fame of Clinton; and here, also, was a fine opportunity of repeating, in a higher strain and on a loftier stage, the ingenious arguments, which, in the very outset of his career, had proved so hard for "Posey and Ewing," when he overthrew those worthies in the great debate respecting the improvement of the Sangamon River.