260 Wisconsin state agricultural society. 
objects in view than the mere amassing of wealth. But to gain 
those higher ends, it belongs to legislation to aid each man as far 
as practicable to retain for his own uses, the legitimate results of 
bis own labor and providence; to place barriers in the way of the 
wiles of the more crafty but less laborious, thereby preventing 
them from obtaining an undue share of the general results of 
industry. 
In short, little more is wanted in legislation than to protect 
«ach individual in such honest pursuit as interest or inclination 
shall induce him to pursue. If this principle be correct, how 
much of all former legislation, of which the principal object has 
been to give the majority of the profits on labor to the privileged 
few, would have been by this rule avoided. Who can calculate 
the amount of moral evil which resulted from the present gam¬ 
bling, speculating spirit, superinduced by partial injudicious class 
of legislatition. 
Mr. Robbius asked the gentleman what occupation he pursued. 
Mr. Graham said that he was a man of all trades. 
Mr. Robbins said he should judge so from his career. In the 
state legislature he—Graham—was on the banking committee and 
bad killed banks as dead as a mackerel. As author of the 
Graham Law, bill No. 7, he had killed the republican party, and 
if now he was to be a leader of the grangers that order too would 
go down. 
Mr. Graham, in reply, said : True, true, I did what I could to 
destroy the wild cat banks to keep them from destroying us; and 
so far as the republican party is concerned, I am free to admit 
that I was at its birth and believed in its doctrines; and I want to 
say to the gentleman that the causes of its defeat lie deeper than 
that suggested by him. If the people had felt that all was fair 
and honest at Washington, you might as well have undertaken to 
dam up the Niagara with a bundle of straw, or storm Gibralter 
with a popgun, as to have beaten the republican party with a 
stringent license law. 
