Wisconsin State Agricultural Society. 
169 
a cord of wood, and hence the fallacy or muddle of the Dartmouth 
College case. 
We must say to these artificial persons, that as a controlling ele¬ 
ment in the powers of the state, we propose to see that the purpose 
of their creation he fairly carried out, and that they be justly and 
liberally paid for it. But as modesty is no virtue when concealing 
the truth, we may as well tell them that the charging more for a 
less service, the discriminating between persons and places, the ad¬ 
justing of rates to cover fictitious investments, the condemning of 
lands without just compensation, the transporting hirelings to vote 
loans of credit, the floating of supply, construction and transpor¬ 
tation under currents, by which stock-holders are left minus their 
dues, is severally and generally opposed to the public good, and can 
not be tolerated by those with whom that good is intrusted, and 
that any such authority whatever that neglects to control or rem¬ 
edy such wrongs, we propose to see superceded as speedily as possible. 
And now for a word to all our officials in trust of power. 
As organized producers we must distinctly say to them, u We 
choose to have you regard our special welfare as the butt-end of the 
general welfare.” 
We must say to our servants at Washington, you made a mistake 
in repealing the Income-Tax; it ought to be restored at once and 
made a source of large and enduring revenue. In repealing that 
law, you ignored the soundest principle of taxation that was ever 
known to fiscal rule; because the increase of wealth furnishes the 
most equitable and exact scale of charge for Government protection, 
as well as a uniform basis of exemption. But you did not ignore 
proneness of capital to shun its own legitimate burdens, by plac¬ 
ing them upon the shoulders of labor. 
That reciprocity treaty, too, with Canada, in itself, was more 
than a mistake; it was a blunder, and can only escape becoming a 
folly by the action of the Senate, upon the heels of an abrogation 
of even a better treaty, as late as 1866; it would look like an impu¬ 
tation upon our common intelligence, were it not for the ever shad¬ 
owing features of a crime, derived from its sacrificing the many to 
the interest of the few. Independent of the enormity of giving a 
very great deal of what we need for a very little of what we don t 
need, is the additional enormity of turning the control of the reve- 
