Papers Of Abraham Lincoln

1
Resolved, That the committee on Finance be instructed to report a bill to increase the salaries of the Circuit Court Judges to one thousand dollars.2

1On December 17, 1836, Ninian W. Edwards introduced the resolution in the House of Representatives, and on that day the House laid the resolution on the table.
Illinois House Journal. 1836. 10th G. A., 1st sess., 68.

2Since the House laid the resolution on the table, it did not go to the Committee on Finance, which included Abraham Lincoln. However, on February 8, 1837, Dan Stone introduced a “Bill to Increase the Salaries of the Circuit Court Judges.” Yet although read twice and referred to a select committee, the bill never became a law. The salaries of circuit court judges remained $750 until the passage of the new Illinois State Constitution in 1848, when it went it finally reached $1,000.
Illinois House Journal. 1836. 10th G. A., 1st sess., 68, 510; An Act Regulating the Times of Holding the Supreme and Circuit Courts, and Fixing the Salary of the Circuit Judges; Illinois State Constitution (1848), art. 5, sec. 10.