favorites among the advocates. The funda mental principles of the common law, as set forth by Blackstone and Chitty, were not so difficult to acquire, and brains, common sense, force of character, tenacity of purpose, ready wit and power of speech did the rest, and supplied all the deficiencies of learning. The lawsuits of those days were ex tremely simple, and the principles of natural justice were mainly relied on to dispose of them at the Bar and on the Bench, without resort to technical learning. Railroads, cor porations absorbing the chief business of the community, combined and inherited wealth, with all the subtle and intricate ques tions they breed, had not yet come in—and so the professional agents and the equipment which they require were not needed. But there were many highly educated and power ful men at the Bar of Illinois, even in those early days, whom the spirit of enterprise had carried there in search of fame and fortune. It was by constant contact and conflict with these that Lincoln acquired professional strength and skill. Every community and every age creates its own Bar, entirely ade quate for its present uses and necessities. So in Illinois, as the population and wealth of the State kept on doubling and quad rupling, its Bar represented a growing abundance of learning and science and tech nical skill. The early practitioners grew with its growth and mastered the requisite knowl edge. Chicago soon grew to be one of the largest and richest and certainly the most intensely active city on the continent, and if any of my professional friends here had gone there in Lincoln's later years to try or argue a cause, or transact other business, with any idea that Edinburgh or London had a monopoly of legal learning, science, or subtlety, they would certainly have found their mistake. In those early days in the West, every lawyer, especially every court lawyer, was necessarily a politician, constantly engaged in the public discussion of many questions evolved from the rapid development of town,
county{ state, and federal affairs. Then and there, in this regard, public discussion sup plied the place which the universal activity of the press has since monopolized, and the public speaker who, by clearness, force, earn estness, and wit, could make himself felt on the questions of the day would readily come to the front. In the absence of that immense variety of popular entertainments which now feed the public taste and appetite, the people found their chief amusement in frequenting the courts and public and political assem blies. In either place he who impressed, entertained and amused them most was the hero of the hour. They did not discriminate very carefully between the eloquence of the forum and the eloquence of the hustings. Human nature ruled in both alike, and he who was the most effective speaker in a po litical harangue was often retained as most likely AndtoI win have in anocause doubt to be in tried this way or argued. many retainers came to Lincoln. Fees, money in any form, had no charms for him; in his eager pursuit of fame he could not afford to make money. He was ambitious to distin guish himself by some great service to man kind, and this ambition for fame and real public service left no room for avarice in his composition. However much he earned, he seemed to have ended every year hardly richer than he began it, and yet as the years passed fees came to him freely. One of $5,000 is recorded—a very large professional fee at that time, even in any part of America, the paradise of lawyers. I lay great stress on Lincoln's career as a lawyer—much more than his biographers do—because in America a state of things exists wholly different from that which prevails in Great Britain. The profession of the law always has been, and is to this day. the principal avenue to public life, and I am sure that his training and ex perience in the courts had much to do with the development of those forces of intellect and character which he soon displayed on a broader arena.
