Page:Samuel Scoville -Abraham Lincoln, His Story.djvu/66



has been well said that the difference between a politician and a statesman is that a politician tries to make the people do something for him, while a statesman tries to do something for the people. Applying this test Abraham Lincoln was always a statesman. In his first speech in 1832, when he was only twenty-three years old, he declared:

It was the recognition that he was really trying to serve them and not himself which gave him the confidence of the people. Moreover, he had the same trust in the people that they had in him.

he asked in one of his speeches.

Honesty was the policy on which he founded his public life. In 1834, when he was first elected to the Illinois legislature, his friends