silver, that it will be dumped down upon us.

537

Now, let us see

about that for a moment. It means that any one with sixteen ounces of silver can come here from any part of the world, or with one ounce of gold, and he can buy your grain, he can buy your house and lot, he can buy your manufactured product, and buy the property and commodities of all sorts that you have to sell with either the one or the other; that is to say, he can buy just as much with his sixteen ounces of silver as with his one ounce of gold.

With the billions upon billions of property existing in this country to-day and being produced in this country every year, we simply offer to exchange that which we have in abundance on a basis of one pound of gold as the equivalent of sixteen pounds of silver. We invite, then, the world to come with its silver and make the exchange. No nation now, it is true, offers in exchange for silver the gold at any fixed ratio; consequently, all the silver that is coined is used in the countries where it is coined. And why? Because no great power offers to exchange commodities for one metal or the other at any fixed ratio. That is the only trouble with silver to-day.

Now, it must be remembered that France gave an example to the world in this regard, having kept its silver on a parity with gold for a period of seventy years, on a ratio of 15% to 1. It said to the nations of the world, "Come with your gold and your silver, fifteen and one-half ounces of silver or one ounce of gold, and you can buy all of our salable property in France and you can pay us in silver or in gold, just as you choose, on that basis." And, according to the report of the British royal commission of 1888 on that subject, France was enabled to maintain the parity of the two metals at that ratio, for the reason that she had property enough to effect exchanges on that basis. We are in the same condition.

What is it, then, that you are asked to do? It is that we, the Government of the United States, we as a people say to all the world, especially the silver-using people, all of the Asiatic nations and the Great Indies, come here with your white metal, if you choose to come, and trade with us on the basis of 16 to 1, and buy your commodities from us at that ratio. When you do that, will not the silver-using people come to our shores to make their purchases rather than go to the European powers, where they demand a ratio of 22 to 25? There can be no doubt of the answer to that question.

You at once undermine and sap the prosperity of Western Europe. You will divert from them all the trade of every silver-using country in the world, because you offer to sell those people property and commodities here that are better, and on better terms, than they can get anywhere else in the world. You say their silver will come here. Suppose it does. It will go back again, because here is the flood gate that is opened for gold and silver to come and to go with the tides of trade, of free exchange, in this the greatest country the world ever saw. It will come and it will go, and so it will continue; because we have opened up the mint, we have opened a sluice for the dam that now blockades the silver tide.

Do you suppose that England could stand that for a moment? Certainly not. What has made the manufacturers in Manchester, England, the strongest bimetallists in the world to-day? Simply the fact that they must sell their commodities in India for the India rupee. They are thus interested in the value of that silver rupee. They want to maintain it; and if all the manufacturing products of Western Europe that are sent here and sold to us are sold for silver, as they must be, or gold at our ratio, do you not see how quickly you will convert them to bimetallism? Thus you will segregate all the industrial inhabitants of Western Europe from those who live on fixed incomes,- the aristocracy, the bond holders, and the coupon clippers. That is all there is about it and we want to segregate them.

You see, then, that when we do this in this country, Western Europe must come to our standard or abandon commerce with all silver-using countries and with us. Mark that. We are the best market in the world for manufactured European products. They cannot live without this market, and they cannot keep this market unless they recognize and take our silver at the same. value we take it; and they know it.

I know that the gold owners in that country and this, the bond holders and bankers, those who are living on fixed incomes, and who are living on interest, and whose business it is to loan money and to have that money increase in value from year to year — they fight this proposition as a matter of course; but I do not think they ought to do it, for ultimately I think they would be benefited, as would the industrial people of the world. They ought not to fight it. They know what I state is truth, that if this country gives free coinage of gold and silver at a fair ratio it settles the question for the world and drives the world to

bimetallism instead of gold monometallism.

539

They know that,

and hence their eagerness and determination to prevent it.

It is a fight between the standards, and this great country must settle it; and you, my friends, must think about settling it here. It is a serious question. It is not only a serious question for the American people, but we are appealed to by the oppressed in the Old World, those who have not the voice that our people in their sovereignty have.

The oppressed of the Old World are appealing to us to settle for the world this great question, and to settle for men who are seeking advantages in the stock markets, not for men who are seeking advantages in bond holding, in interest drawing, in money lending, in seeking to have money increase in value every day and every year, but for the great toiling and producing masses of the other countries as well as our own, for whom it is our proud province here to think and to legislate. They are in a panic, my friends. I want to remind you of that, and they will remind you of it when you go home, if you are not reminded of it now. The people are watching this thing. They understand that the battle to be fought here is the battle of the standards the world over, and the man who fails now they will brand as a traitor to the cause which is intrusted to his hands.

Now, I say, Mr. Speaker, the contention that we lose our gold, and that we have got to exchange gold for silver, does not hold good. It is put on the broad proposition of a nation which produces enough wealth; and where is the nation under the shining sun that compares with this growing country of ours in population and increasing development? I believe that I may yet live to see this country with nearly one hundred million inhabitants, increasing, as it does, at the rate of over a million and a half annually.

Many now born, by the time they are voters will compose part of a nation containing perhaps one hundred and twenty-five millions of people, with unsurpassed energies, with a genius nowhere equaled, and with a vast territory upon which those energies and that genius can operate. But a short time ago when you looked across the Alleghany Mountains you beheld the Western wilderness roamed only by the savage and wild beast. Today it is teeming with its millions of civilized people, and when you cross the Mississippi you just begin to enter the great domain of this country of ours, for more than two-thirds of it lies beyond the Father of Waters.

And, Mr. Speaker, it is that two-thirds of our territory, rich as it is in gold and silver, embedded together in the same deposits, in the same mountains, so that you cannot extract the one without extracting the other, it is that portion of our territory that would give us the money that we need, the money of the world, good money, hard money, Democratic money,- a country that the civilized world must look to for its future monetary supply if it is to continue on what is called the hard-money basis. And yet we are to-day asked to do what? To lay the blighting hand of confiscation upon the millions of people inhabiting that country, to turn them out as tramps upon the land, merely to satisfy the greed of English gold.

Oh, my God, shall we do such a thing as that? Will you crush the people of your own land and send them abroad as tramps? Will you kill and destroy your own industries, and especially the production of your precious metals that ought to be sent abroad everywhere, will you do this simply to satisfy the greed of Wall Street, the mere agent of Lombard Street, in oppressing the people of Europe and of this country? It cannot be done, it shall not be done! I speak for the great masses of the Mississippi Valley, and those west of it, when I say you shall not do it!

Any political party that undertakes to do it in God's name, be trampled, as it ought to be trampled, into the ast of condemnation, now and in the future. Speaking as a Democrat, all my life battling for what I conceived to be Democracy, an! what I conceived to be right, I am yet an American above De mocracy. I do not intend, we do not intend, that any party shall survive, if we can help it, that will lay the confiscating hand upon Americans in the interest of England or of Europe. Now, mark it. This may be strong language, but heed it. The people mean it, and, my friends of the Eastern Democracy, we bid farewell when you do that thing.

Now, you can take your choice of sustaining America against England, American interests, and American laborers and producers, or you can go out of power. We have come to the Parting of the Ways. I do not pretend to speak for anybody but myself and my constituents, but I believe that I do speak for the great masses of the great Mississippi Valley when I say that we will not submit to the domination of any political party, however much we may love it, that lays the sacrificing hand upon silver and will demonetize it in this country.

LORD BOLINGBROKE

(1678-1751)

ENRY ST. JOHN (Viscount Bolingbroke), the friend of Pope, and the most admired orator of his day in England, was born

at Battersea in 1678. His great reputation as an orator is now completely beyond the reach of criticism since, according to the British Encyclopedia, not one of his speeches has come down to us. When for the purposes of this work a search was made through the parliamentary debates to test this statement, only a report attributed to him and a few sentences of debate in the third person were found to represent him. His prose writings, however, were numerous and they are still readily accessible. Professor Morley recently republished a number of his letters. He died in 1751. Heading the Tories successfully under Queen Anne, Bolingbroke, an adherent of the Stuarts, was out-generaled by the Whigs after her death, and learning that they intended to impeach him he left England, remaining abroad from 1715 to 1723. This experience suggested his celebrated 'Reflections upon Exile,' from which an extract is taken to illustrate his admirable prose style, on which it is said that Edmund Burke formed his style as an orator.

D

MISFORTUNE AND EXILE

ISSIPATION of mind and length of time are remedies to which the greatest part of mankind trust in their afflictions. But the first of these works a temporary, the second a slow effect; and such are unworthy of a wise man. Are we to fly from ourselves that we may fly from our misfortunes, and only to imagine that the disease is cured because we find means to get some moments of respite from pain? Or shall we expect from time, the physician of brutes, a lingering and uncertain deliverance? Shall we wait to be happy till we can forget that we are miserable, and owe to the weakness of our faculties a tranquillity which ought to be the effect of their strength? Far otherwise. Let us set all our past and present afflictions at once before our eyes. Let us resolve to overcome them, instead of