Lincoln learns that McLean County is proposing to tax Illinois Central Railroad property. Company offers to retain him. Before accepting he writes to T. R. Webber, clerk of Champaign Circuit Court: "As this will be the same question I have had under consideration for you, . . . you have the prior right to my services; if you choose to secure me a fee something near such as I can get from the other side. The question . . . is the largest law question that can now be got up in the State; and therefore, in justice to myself, I can not afford, if I can help it, to miss a fee altogether." Abraham Lincoln to Thompson R. Webber, 12 September 1853, CW, 2:202.