Wisconsin State Agricultural Society. 421 
Bagehot—the place where, the time when, decide the success of 
most of man’s efforts. 
The Sandwich glass-stock is equal to any in Xew England; its 
success marvellous; its dividends most exhilarating. But the at¬ 
tempt to make glass where Edinburgh street now runs made bank¬ 
rupts of two generations. Waltham and Lowell stand on the bro¬ 
ken fortunes of men who tried, out of season , to make cotton cloth in 
Hingham. 
My idea is that the time has come when we can introduce the 
Declaration of Independence into finance and he republican all 
through. Surely here, where our only justification for meeting, is 
that the world has been 'mistaken and needs to grow wiser—here is 
no place to object to a theory because it was once somewhere ex¬ 
ploded—that will do for matters of right and wrong which are al¬ 
ways the same whether at Rome or in Jerusalem, now and in the 
dark ages. But it is wholly out of place for the subjects we here 
discuss, viz.: methods and expedients, things which circumstances 
and times, and the state of public intelligence, make possible or im¬ 
possible. 
In fact, most of the improvements in finance have not come from 
philosophic investigation; but are devices struck out by necessity, 
at first unnoticed or decried—then continued—then found indis¬ 
pensable. To substitute paper for gold, is only a step in the direc¬ 
tion all progress has uniformly moved. First barter—then money 
—then bills of exchange—then bank bills—then deposits and 
checks—then government paper-money—all expedients of which 
no one perceived at first either the value or the full effects. Our 
war scared us into the best currency we have ever had. The peo¬ 
ple, if wise, will hold on to it. 
You asked me, gentlemen, to state my finance plan for bettering 
the state of affairs. I have no preference for any particular plan. 
Among the half-dozen proposed, either will suit me if it secures 
three things. 
1st. Take from the national banks all right to issue bills. 
2d. Let the nation itself supply a currency ample for all our 
needs. 
3d. Reduce the rate of interest. 
There is only one thing I object to in all plans; that is, any at¬ 
tempt to secure a specie basis—impossible, no matter how hard we 
