236 Wisconsin state agricultural society. 
the popular mind every day, and the main idea once struck, the 
difficulties that first may seem to be in the way, will one by one 
give place. For example, General Jackson’s Maysville veto, which, 
when this matter was first broached, was thought by almost every 
old time democrat to be an insuperable barrier. So also the old 
whig notion of protection was thought to be interfered with. But 
it is found by a careful analysis that neither are in the way. We 
are now shaping our course to an entirely new emergency, at least 
one that has never been so sensibly felt, nor was ever presented 
as a question in the old political schools. And, besides, the veto 
and the articles of political faith referred to were directed to meet 
questions entirely different from this. 
Is the question then asked, is not the constitution in the way ? 
Common sense answers no. The lawyers of course are divided. 
But suppose it is. What of it? Is not a seventeenth or an 
eighteenth amendment just as much in order as a sixteenth? 
President Lincoln, of hallowed memory, recommended, and Con¬ 
gress sanctioned measures incompatible both with the letter and 
spirit of the constitution on the ground of war necessity, and all 
the people said Amen. Has not peace, necessities as imperious as 
war ? 
A thousand and one objections will be raised, no doubt, by 
men of fruitful imaginations, but I think they will be found on 
careful examination to be capable of satisfactory solution. 
This view necessitates political action. Our appeal is to the 
government of the United States. The pressure of public senti¬ 
ment must be brought to bear on congress. 
What may we reasonably expect congress to do? First inaugu¬ 
rate a system of water communication, including rivers and canals, 
for the double purpose of facilitating transportation and develop¬ 
ing the mechanical resources of the country, by rendering more 
available the water power. Thus the proper improvement of the 
Wisconsin and Fox rivers would not only tap Minnesota, and 
drain northern and central Wisconsin, thereby taking off a tre¬ 
mendous strain on the transportation facilities further south, but 
also open up on these two rivers alone, and their tributaries, a 
water power sufficient to drive half the machinery of the nation. 
I refer to this case simply as one of many; a representative 
