Taking up the resolution on the bank, he declared its meaning:
"Some gentlemen have their stock in their hands, while others,
who have more money than they know what to do with, want it;
and this, and this alone, is the question, to settle which
we are called on to squander thousands of the people's money.
What interest, let me ask, have the people in the settlement
of this question? What difference is it to them whether the
stock is owned by Judge Smith or Sam Wiggins? If any gentleman
be entitled to stock in the bank, which he is kept out of
possession of by others, let him assert his right in the
Supreme Court, and let him or his antagonist, whichever may be
found in the wrong, pay the costs of suit. It is an old maxim,
and a very sound one, that he that dances should always pay
the fiddler. Now, sir, in the present case, if any gentlemen
whose money is a burden to them, choose to lead off a dance,
I am decidedly opposed to the people's money being used to pay
the fiddler. No one can doubt that the examination proposed
by this resolution must cost the State some ten or twelve
thousand dollars; and all this to settle a question in
which the people have no interest, and about which they care
nothing. These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in
concert to fleece the people; and now that they have got into
a quarrel with themselves, we are called upon to appropriate
the people's money to settle the quarrel."
The resolution had declared that the bank practised various methods
which were "to the great injury of the people." Lincoln took the
occasion to announce his ideas of the people and the politicians.
"If the bank really be a grievance, why is it that no one of
the real people is found to ask redress of it? The truth is,
no such oppression exists. If it did, our people would groan
with memorials and petitions, and we would not be permitted
to rest day or night till we had put it down. The people know
their rights, and they are never slow to assert and
maintain them when they are invaded. Let them call for an
investigation, and I shall ever stand ready to respond to the
call. But they have made no such call. I make the assertion
boldly, and without fear of contradiction, that no man who
does not hold an office, or does not aspire to one, has ever
found any fault of the bank. It has doubled the prices of the
products of their farms, and filled their pockets with a sound
circulating medium; and they are all well pleased with its
operations. No, sir, it is the politician who is the first to
sound the alarm (which, by the way, is a false one). It is he
who, by these unholy means, is endeavoring to blow up a storm
that he may ride upon and direct. It is he, and he alone,
that here proposes to spend thousands of the people's
public treasure, for no other advantage to them than to make
valueless in their pockets the reward of their industry. Mr.
Chairman, this work is exclusively the work, of politicians--a
set of men who have interests aside from the interests of
the people, and who, to say the most of them, are, taken as
a mass, at least one long step removed from honest men. I say
this with the greater freedom, because, being a politician
myself, none can regard it as personal."
[Illustration: OLD SECOND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS.
During the special session of the legislature convened in the fall of
1839 (the first one held at Springfield), the House of Representatives
occupied this church, the State House being unfinished. At the short
special session which opened November 23, 1840, the House first went
into the Methodist church, but on the second day Representative John
Logan (father of General John A. Logan) offered a resolution "that the
Senate be respectfully requested to exchange places of convening with
this House for a short time on account of the impossibility of the
House discharging its business in so small a place as the Methodist
church." This was adopted, and the House moved over to the Second
Presbyterian church. At this special session the Whigs were interested
in preventing a _sine die_ adjournment (because they desired to
protect the State bank, which had been authorized in 1838 to suspend
specie payment until after the adjournment of the next session of the
General Assembly), and to this end they sought to break the quorum.
All the Whigs walked out, except Lincoln and Joseph Gillespie, who
were left behind to demand a roll-call when deemed expedient. A
few were brought in by the sergeant-at-arms. Lincoln and Gillespie,
perceiving that there would be a quorum if they remained, started to
leave; and finding the doors locked, Lincoln raised a window, and
both men jumped out--an incident, as Mr. Herndon says, which Lincoln
"always seemed willing to forget." It was in this church, too, that
Lincoln delivered an address before the Washingtonian Temperance
Society, on Washington's birthday, in 1842. The church was erected in
1839, and stood until torn down, some thirty years later, to make room
for a new edifice.--_J. McCan Davis._]
The speech was published in full in the "Sangamo Journal" and the
editor commented:
"Mr. Lincoln's remarks on Mr. Linder's bank resolution in
the paper are quite to the point. Our friend carries the true
Kentucky rifle, and when he fires he seldom fails of sending
the shot home."