e had
suffered in youth. As his powers enlarged, his reputation extended,
for he was always before the people, felt a warm sympathy with all that
concerned them, took a zealous part in the discussion of every public
question, and made his personal influence ever more widely and deeply
felt.

My brethren of the legal profession will naturally ask me, how could
this rough backwoodsman, whose youth had been spent in the forest or
on the farm and the flatboat, without culture or training, education or
study, by the random reading, on the wing, of a few miscellaneous law
books, become a learned and accomplished lawyer? Well, he never did.
He never would have earned his salt as a 'Writer' for the 'Signet',
nor have won a place as advocate in the Court of Session, where the
technique of the profession has reached its highest perfection, and
centuries of learning and precedent are involved in the equipment of a
lawyer. Dr. Holmes, when asked by an anxious young mother, "When should
the education of a child begin?" replied, "Madam, at least two centuries
before it is born!" and so I am sure it is with the Scots lawyer.

But not so in Illinois in 1840. Between 1830 and 1880 its population
increased twenty-fold, and when Lincoln began practising law in
Springfield in 1837, life in Illinois was very crude and simple, and so
were the courts and the administration of justice. Books and libraries
were scarce. But the people loved justice, upheld the law, and followed
the courts, and soon found their favorites among the advocates. The
fundamental 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 extremely 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,
corporations absorbing the chief business of the community, combined
and inherited wealth, with all the subtle and intricate questions 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 powerful 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.