Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1877-05-17
On the Capabilities CT Man

To the Editor of the HERALD:
Man, as we find him in the United
States and other civilized countries,
is being of wonderful power. There
seem to be no limit to his inventive
faculty, and he has done more in the
last fly years, by his inventions, to
make the nations of the world ac~
quainted with each other, than had
ever before been done in a thousand
years. What would have been thought
of man fifty years ago, had he pre-
dictcd that within fifty years the PEG
pie OF this country would read, in
their daily papers, of what happened
in Europe and Asia the day before
There could have been but one opinion
about him; that he was a monomaDl-
ae: and had any one dared TO give il
as his opinion that the maR was of &
sound mind, they would have set him
down as a fool, or wilful liar Yes
reader, there is no doubt but what
you and | should have been Of thai
opinion, aud we would probably have
felt so sorry for the man that we
could have been easily persuaded
to contribute something toward send.
ing him to the insane asylum-espec.
tally if he had a wife and family OIL
small children for how must that
wife and mother have felt when she
looked on her little ones and realized
that their papa's mind had all gone
not enough left of it to distinguish be.
tween right and wrong, or possible
and impossible things; with little or
no prospect of its ever returning
Poor woman. she would no doubt
have received the sympathy of the
entire community, in her supposed
great affection. 1t seems that man
has tried his inventive powers on al.
most everything that he could think
of that would tend TO lessen mans la
Dor in agriculture and the mechanical
arts; and, az it were, to annihlate
time and distance in the transporta-
ton of men and their various produc-
tons from place to place, and it must
be admitted that they have been won.
derfully successful, and we ackno wl>
edge that the inventors have right
to look upon themselves as benetac-
tors of the human family. Now l
have so much faith in the capabilities
Of these men that believe them capa-
BILE of doing wonderful things in our
law machinery. l believe them capa-
BILE of framing law that will dispose
of a horse thief or other criminal,
without keeping him in jail four or
five months, till the bill for boarding
and guarding amounted to twice the
value of the horse; and then make
the people pay for thirty grand-jury
men to come and see what they think
about it, and then bring in thirty
more men from long distances, so as
to give the thief chance to pick his
jury and then keep the people at
work spell longer, to plow the
ground, to raise the corn, to feed the
pigs, to make the hogs, to bring the
money to pay one lawyer for trying to
convict the thief, and another to try
to clear him Oh, yes, these invent
ors must be capable of giving us some
better way of disposing of these cases
than we now have, or they could not
have had sense enough to have kept
them out of fire and water, while
they were perfecting their wonderful
inventions. | hope they will try their
inventive powers on our law machin-
cry, and doubt not they would be able
to make 1T work as much better than
it now does, as the electric telegraph
is better for carrying news from one
country to another than mule team.
LUTHER Brown.
Patch Grove, May IL, 1877.