Notes regarding Government, [1 July 1854]1
Government is a combination of the people of a country to effect certain objects by
joint effort. The best framed and best administered governments are necessarily expensive;
while by errors in frame and maladministration most of them are more onerous than
they need be, and some of them very oppressive. Why, then, should we have government?
Why not each individual take to himself the whole fruit of his labor, without having
any of it taxed away, in services, corn, or money? Why not take just so much land
as he can cultivate with his own hands, without buying it of any one?
The legitimate object of government is “to do
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for the people what needs to be done, but which they can not, by individual effort, do at all, or do so well, for themselves.” There are many
such things— some of them exist independently of the injustice in the world. Making
and maintaining roads, bridges, and the like; providing for the helpless young and
afflicted; common schools; and disposing of deceased men’s property, are instances.
But a far larger class of objects springs from the injustice of men. If one people
will make war upon another, it is a necessity with that other to unite and coöperate
for defense. Hence the military department. If some men will kill, or beat, or constrain
others, or despoil them of property, by force, fraud, or noncompliance with contracts,
it is a common object with peaceful and just men to prevent it. Hence the criminal
and civil departments.
1This document is attributed to Abraham Lincoln, but the location of the original document in Lincoln’s hand is not known. 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 of which this appears to be a revision, 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.
Printed Transcription, 2 page(s), John G. Nicolay and John Hay, eds., Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln , new and enlarged ed. (New York: Francis D. Tandy, 1905), 2:182-83.