to the canal lands, and supposed that the policy of
the State would be different in regard to them, if the representatives
from that section of country could themselves choose the policy; but the
representatives from other parts of the State had a veto upon it, and
regulated the policy. He thought that if the State had all the lands,
the policy of the Legislature would be more liberal to all sections.

He referred to the policy of the General Government. He thought that
if the national debt had not been paid, the expenses of the government
would not have doubled, as they had done since that debt was paid.

TO ------ ROW.

SPRINGFIELD, June 11, 1839 DEAR ROW:

Mr. Redman informs me that you wish me to write you the particulars of
a conversation between Dr. Felix and myself relative to you. The Dr.
overtook me between Rushville and Beardstown.

He, after learning that I had lived at Springfield, asked if I was
acquainted with you. I told him I was. He said you had lately been
elected constable in Adams, but that you never would be again. I asked
him why. He said the people there had found out that you had been
sheriff or deputy sheriff in Sangamon County, and that you came off and
left your securities to suffer. He then asked me if I did not know such
to be the fact. I told him I did not think you had ever been sheriff or
deputy sheriff in Sangamon, but that I thought you had been constable. I
further told him that if you had left your securities to suffer in that
or any other case, I had never heard of it, and that if it had been so,
I thought I would have heard of it.

If the Dr. is telling that I told him anything against you whatever, I
authorize you to contradict it flatly. We have no news here.

Your friend, as ever, A. LINCOLN.

SPEECH ON NATIONAL BANK

IN THE HALL OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, December 20, 1839.

FELLOW-CITIZENS:--It is peculiarly embarrassing to me to attempt a
continuance of the discussion, on this evening, which has been conducted
in this hall on several preceding ones. It is so because on each of
those evenings there was a much fuller attendance than now, without any
reason for its being so, except the greater interest the community feel
in the speakers who addressed them then than they do in him who is to do
so now. I am, indeed, apprehensive that the few who have attended
have done so more to spare me mortification than in the hope of being