Notes regarding Government, [1 July 1854]1
The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever
they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves— in their separate, and individual capacities–
In all that the people can individually do as well for themselves, government ought
not to interfere–
The desirable things which the individuals of a people can not do, or can not well do, for themselves, fall into two classes; those which have relation to th wrongs, and those which have not– Each of these branch off into an infinite variety of
subdivisions–
The first— that in relation to wrongs— embraces all crimes, misdemesnors, and non-performance of contracts– The other embraces all which, in it’s nature, and without wrong, requires combined action, as public roads and highways,
public schools, charities, pauperism, orphanage, estates of the deceased, and the
machinery of government itself–
From this it appears that if all men were just there still would be some, though not so much need of government–
1Abraham Lincoln wrote this document. In editing Lincoln’s papers, his secretaries John G. Nicolay and John M. Hay gave this undated fragment and several other short undated pieces on government and
slavery the tentative date of composition of July 1, 1854. Roy P. Basler maintained
this dating in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln despite finding no evidence to support it, and suggested that this document and the
related version which appears to revise this may have been intended for an otherwise unknown lecture
by Lincoln.
John G. Nicolay and John Hay, eds., Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, new and enlarged ed. (New York: Francis D. Tandy, 1905), 2:182-84, 186-87; Roy P.
Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), 2:220-21.
Handwritten Document, 1 page(s),
Abraham Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress (Washington, DC).