Wisconsin State Agricultural Society. 
419 
has worked his way from nothing to three hundred thousand dol¬ 
lars 1 worth of real estate in the city of his residence, and was for 
twenty years a director of the best bank there. He approves such 
a plan as mine. In other cities I meet bankers, merchants, manu¬ 
facturers, in active and successful business, who, spite of interest 
on the other side, say amen to us reformers. If rumor speaks truth, 
among the presidents of the best money institutions of New York 
we have some staunch friends. 
One thing I wish to say by way of preface. I give little or no 
weight to the statement that what I propose has never been tried 
in times past, or, if attempted, has not succeeded. Our chairman 
said my theory had been exploded two hundred years ago. Very 
likely. Most of the accepted opinions of to-day were u exploded 
two hundred years ago,” and more than half of our inventions were 
tis thoroughly ridiculed then as Stephenson’s locomotive was sixty 
years ago. If we had not tried again, experiments which had failed 
two hundred years ago, there would have been little progress in the 
world. Our chairman quoted some quaint words from a worthy 
and sensible man, Sir Josiah Child. Very wise words for England 
in 1668, from a man who also advocated fixing the rate of interest 
and keeping it low by law. At that time they held many opinions 
which later experience has disproved, and believed many things im¬ 
possible which their children have succeeded in accomplishing. 
They believed that a nation which exported more than it imported 
was on the high road to bankruptc} r . It required a long argument 
to satisfy many of them that a person who spent a hundred thou¬ 
sand dollars in one night in fire-works did not benefit the country 
as much as he who used it in draining marshes or manufacturing 
wool. They thought 
A church without a bishop, 
A state without a king, 
to be a mad dream; fit only for Plato and More's Utopia. And 
they were right then and there. In Europe at that day a republic 
was as impossible as it is to-day in Spain or Louisiana, unless out¬ 
siders help. That baby needs a go-cart to learn to walk. Our vast 
republic would be impossible without two hundred years of common 
schools behind it, and steam and the telegraph to help. Times 
change. Improvements and inventions are made. What was im¬ 
possible in 1700 is easily done in 1850. With settled habits, and 
