122 Wisconsin- State Agricultural Society. 
city life, is so absorbing that men have only time for action, but 
little time for thought. Those who are the most distinguished in 
the various professions, who are distinguished in commerce .and 
trade, residents of our great cities, will be found to have spent much 
of their time in their earlier years in the country or in smaller 
towns. It has been said, and I think justly, that you cannot judge 
of what a man knows by the size of his library. There are various 
kinds of men, but there are, at least, two classes, one like one of 
our great elevators, that takes in grain and stores it in bins, and 
delivers this same grain, without change, into the cars and into 
the canal-boats. There is another class of men that may be rep¬ 
resented by the mills that receive the grain, that grind it, that bolt 
it, that separate the chaff, the hull from the pure life-giving sub¬ 
stance, and turn out that which is fit for the subsistence of men, 
pabulum for the human body. And it is as necessary, Mr. President, 
that pabulum for the mind should be ground, should be bolted, 
should be assorted, before it is given to men, as that wheat from 
the farm should go through the process that it undergoes in the 
mill; and I say, therefore, that those men who live in the county, 
and those men whose whole attention is not absorbed in the details 
of business in which the mind as well as the body is wholly en¬ 
gaged, are better mills to grind truths, and separate them, and to 
give decisions upon them. x4ny question, whatever, that is beyond 
the comprehension of this American people cannot be settled, and 
if there is any great question which involves the interests of our 
people, which is so intricate that it cannot be brought within the 
comprehension of the average man, then it is a sad thing for our 
country. I come here to-night to consider, with you, the subject 
of finance. 
I am satisfied that there is scarcely any difference of opinion 
among the people of this country with regard to this subject of 
finance in its principles, though there may be with regard to the 
details of perfecting a system which we all desire. There is no in¬ 
telligent man in this State, or in this nation, who desires a circu¬ 
lating medium which is not valuable, a circulating medium for 
which, when he passes it away from him, he shall not receive for it an 
equivalent, a quid 'pro quo. I believe that we are all in favor of an 
absolutely convertible currency, on a specie basis. I think there 
is no difference of opinion with regard to that, and for myself, I 
