Lincoln Favors Paternalism in Government

railroads without borrowing money and paying the interest on it.

If alive on the first Monday in November, I shall vote for Hugh L. White for President. Very respectfully,

NEW SALEM, June 13, 1836.

A. LINCOLN.

Again he was elected, and, with the majority of the Legislature, returned in full confidence that the people demanded a complete system of internal improvements at their expense. The session. of the Illinois Legislature of 1835 was not unlike that in other Western States. Railroads were chartered, canals projected, and a loan of half a million dollars for canal purposes authorized. This was more than two dollars apiece for every man, woman, and child in the State. The State was given over, as by mortgage, to carry on enterprises of vast consequence. Every town in the State should be in railroad connection with every other -aggregating thirteen hundred and fifty miles of construction. Many of the towns were like that city of Eden in which Martin Chuzzlewit expected to make his fortune. The State was in danger of being laid out by the Legislature into in-lots and out-lots from Chicago to Cairo. Eight million dollars were voted for railroads, and four millions more to complete a canal from Lake Michigan to the Illinois River. Innumerable roads and bridges were authorized, and the law directed "that work should be begun at once at the termini of all the roads and the crossings of all rivers." This stupendous folly met the approval of the majority

of the people, and was advocated in a conservative fashion by Lincoln. The infatuation possessed older, wiser men than he. Experienced legislators in General Assembly and in Congress were at the same time strenuously helping to inflate the financial bubble that burst with such dire results in 1837. That year remains in our annals as the Black Friday of fiat legislation—fiat banks, fiat money, fiat canals, fiat railroads, fiat fortunes. And yet the record of those times has taught us little, and speculation has reached a dizzy and almost equally dangerous height at least twice since.

Collapse awoke the spirit of repudiation. The newer States were stunned by the weight of their obligations. Legislature followed Legislature in joint resolutions addressed to their creditors. Illinois bravely rejected repudiation. Speculation and the abuse of the credit system-so ran the resolution of its Assembly-have been common faults. The whole world is guilty. And under this stimulus of universal speculation may not a new State be justified in planning largely for its people? Let the creditors of the State be patient. They shall be paid, for the resources of the State are inexhaustible; its people are vigorous, industrious, and honest, and they will redeem their promises.* The lesson was learned at fearful cost all over the Union-in Pennsylvania and New York as well

* Joint resolution, February 21, 1843. See also the joint resolution against repudiation passed by the Alabama Legislature January 17, 1844.

Sparse Foreign-Born Population

as in Illinois and Kentucky. The lessons of the panic of '37 were incorporated in the constitutions of the next twenty years,* and have been remembered by every later commonwealth.

While the country was intoxicated with speculation and prospective wealth, the frontier did not advance far west. Migration is a child of discontent. The increase in numbers was for a time. chiefly within the old settled area-and this, in 1840, was a little more than nine hundred thousand square miles. The portion of the country that might be called entirely settled was now equal in area to that of the original domain under the treaty of 1783. There were about seventeen millions of people, or about twenty-two to the square mile. In spite of speculation and the panic, the centre of population had maintained an average western movement of nearly five and a half miles a year. The number and the population of cities were increasing. This indicated a continuance of the change going on in the country, from farm to factory. As yet nearly the entire population was native-born. Less than six hundred thousand came from foreign lands, and of these the greater part from Great Britain. A few had come from Canada, Germany, Scandinavia, Italy, and France. There were eight Chinamen in the country. The white population was increasing more rapidly than the black. Emancipation was becoming less common,

* Pennsylvania, 1838; Rhode Island, 1842; Louisiana, 1845; New York, 1846; Illinois, 1848; Michigan, Ohio, and Kentucky, 1850; Indiana and Maryland, 1851.