338 WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCEITY. 
tion are burning and stand round the altar. Agriculture, manu¬ 
factures and progressive knowledge blend their glorious rays to 
cheer the world. But history asserts the fact that 
HUMAN NATURE IS APT TO OVERREACH ITSELF, 
And that the oppressed in time become oppressors. Intelli¬ 
gence and virtue constitute the bulwark of safety. Beneath 
their iufluence monarchies crumble and republics thrive ; intoler¬ 
ance and corruption, both in religion and politics, vanish forever. 
Wisconsin farmers, duty demands of you such economy and 
such legislation as will bring to your homes a full, sound educa¬ 
tion and all its attendant blessings; for, from these quiet retreats, 
your homes, must come our national strength and defenders. We 
may then reasonably hope that reforms begun by us will be per¬ 
fected and maintained by those who come after us. 
I am not one of those who would willingly arry myself against 
railroads and all other internal improvements. These great equal¬ 
izers and annihilators of distance, the means through which pro¬ 
ducer and consumer shall be brought into closer relations, must 
remain, be fostered, constructed where needed, curbed and con¬ 
trolled in a proper degree by that sovereign will which knows no 
superior above the constitutional rights of free men. Time, the 
great leveler of human opinion, will utter its decision, and the 
principle and policy of a liberal but honest legislation will be in¬ 
corporated in the history of this country. 
American farmers never can afford, nor do they desire, to be 
mercenary, or to adopt a policy that shall subserve their own per¬ 
sonal interests alone. Whosoever votes for self, or party, against 
public and general good, is a corrupt voter; and, if you give your 
influence to any political movement opposed to the public wel¬ 
fare, I stand here to charge you with corruption. 
No political party should be narrowed down to professional lines, 
excepting in cases of most imminent danger to national prosperi¬ 
ty. I am sorry to admit—would I were not obliged to—that the 
time has come. A quarter of a century ago, all the wealth of 
monoplies in this country did not exceed $10,000,000. But, in¬ 
calculable as it may appear, this prolific, source of discord and 
strife has already swallowed up over $3,000,000,000 of the people’s 
