Page:Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln, v3.djvu/16

 x Lincoln as a sociologist is also presented in speeches dealing with capitalism ("Perils of Mobocracy"); mob rule ("The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions"); and temperance ("Charity in Temperance Reform"). His style as a popular lecturer is exhibited in his rather commonplace notes for an address on "Niagara Falls"; and the legal habit of his mind is shown in his sound and practical notes for a law lecture. A eulogy of Henry Clay, delivered on the death of that popular idol, is a rather perfunctory performance, since the future emancipator had already divined the coming of a nobler order of statesmanship than that represented by the author of the compromises of 1850.

While in Congress Lincoln served as a member of the Committee on the Post-Office and Post Roads, and as such made a number of reports, some of which, as dealing with special cases involving no principle, have been omitted from the present collection.

So, too, formal calls for Whig conventions, signed by Lincoln along with the other members of the State Committee of the party, as well as an opinion on the Illinois election law, signed by him as one of three members of a sub-committee of the general one, have been omitted as of no value to the student either of politics or personality.