now intimated, probably cannot show it to me
offhand, but by the methods which you have the means of using you
certainly ought to be able to throw a vast deal of light on the subject.
Because the minute you ask the small merchant, the small banker, the
country man, how he looks upon these things and how he thinks they ought
to be arranged in order that he can use them, if he is like some of the
men in country districts whom I know, he will turn out to have had a
good deal of thought upon that subject and to be able to make some very
interesting suggestions whose intelligence and comprehensiveness will
surprise some city gentlemen who think that only the cities understand
the business of the country. As a matter of fact, you do not have time
to think in a city. It takes time to think. You can get what you call
opinions by contagion in a city and get them very quickly, but you do
not always know where the germ came from. And you have no scientific
laboratory method by which to determine whether it is a good germ or a
bad germ.

There are thinking spaces in this country, and some of the thinking done
is very solid thinking indeed, the thinking of the sort of men that we
all love best, who think for themselves, who do not see things as they
are told to see them, but look at them and see them independently; who,
if they are told they are white when they are black, plainly say that
they are black--men with eyes and with a courage back of those eyes to
tell what they see. The country is full of those men. They have been
singularly reticent sometimes, singularly silent, but the country is
full of them. And what I rejoice in is that you have called them into
the ranks. For your methods are bound to be democratic in spite of you.
I do not mean democratic with a big "D," though I have a private
conviction that you cannot be democratic with a small "d" long without
becoming democratic with a big "D." Still that is just between
ourselves. The point is that when we have a _consensus_ of opinion, when
we have this common counsel, then the legislative processes of this
Government will be infinitely illuminated.

I used to wonder when I was Governor of one of the States of this great
country where all the bills came from. Some of them had a very private
complexion. I found upon inquiry--it was easy to find--that practically
nine-tenths of the bills that were introduced had been handed to the
members who introduced them by some constitu