al to him. We are to see him hereafter applying this
sort of science on a grand scale and for a great end. His early
discipline in it is a dull subject, interesting only where it displays,
as it sometimes does, the perfect fairness with which this ambitious
man could treat his own claims as against those of a colleague and
competitor.

In forming any judgment of Lincoln's career it must, further, be
realised that, while he was growing up as a statesman, the prevailing
conception of popular government was all the time becoming more
unfavourable to leadership and to robust individuality. The new party
machinery adopted by the Democrats under Jackson, as the proper mode of
securing government by the people, induced a deadly uniformity of
utterance; breach of that uniformity was not only rash, but improper.
Once in early days it was demanded in a newspaper that "all candidates
should show their hands." "Agreed," writes Lincoln, "here's mine"; and
then follows a young man's avowal of advanced opinions; he would give
the suffrage to "all whites who pay taxes or bear arms, by no means
excluding females." Disraeli, who was Lincoln's contemporary, throve
by exuberances quite as startling as this, nor has any English
politician found it damaging to be bold. On this occasion indeed (in
1836) Lincoln was far from damaging himself; the Whigs had not till a
few years later been induced, for self-preservation, to copy the
Democratic machine. But it is striking that the admiring friend who
reports this declaration, "too audacious and emphatic for the statesmen
of a later day," must carefully explain how it could possibly suit the
temper of a time which in a few years passed away. Very soon the
question whether a proposal or even a sentiment was timely or premature
came to bulk too large in the deliberations of Lincoln's friends. The
reader will perhaps wonder later whether such considerations did not
bulk too largely in Lincoln's own mind. Was there in his
statesmanship, even in later days when he had great work to do, an
element of that opportunism which, if not actually base, is at least
cheap? Or did he come as near as a man with many human weaknesses
could come to the wise and nobly calculated opportunism which is not
merely the most beneficent statesmanship, but demands a heroic
self-mastery?

The main interest of his doings in Illinois politics and in Congress is
the help they may give in penetrating his later mind.