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opposed to free and unlimited coinage by this country alone and independently.'

"I challenge you to find in any Democratic platform made by a national convention, or expressed by any vote of the Democratic party in the Senate or House, a declaration that sustains the President.

"The President has written a new platform, and it must be endorsed by the Democracy of the country before it is binding on any man. (A voice, 'You are right.') If you believe the President is right in running his pen through our platform and declaring that the aid of foreign nations is necessary to enable Congress to make laws for our people, express it in your resolution; but, if you believe with me that this nation is great enough, strong enough and grand enough to legislate for its own people, regardless of the entreaties and the threats of foreign Powers, then vote for the minority report. (Applause.)

"Pass that bill through the Senate and where is your hope for silver? Do you believe in the use of gold and silver? Why, read what the platform said in 1880 and 1884. In 1880 we said 'honest money, consisting of gold and silver and paper convertible into coin.' Silver was honest money then. When did it become dishonest? In 1884 we believed in honest money, the gold and silver coinage of the Constitution, and a circulating medium convertible into such coin without loss. In

1884 silver was honest money, and no Democrat in a national convention dared to denounce silver as cheap, nasty or dishonest. In 1888 we reaffirmed the platform of 1884, so that in 1888 silver was honest money. In 1892 we declared for the coinage of both metals without discrimination and without cost for mintage. Aye, silver was honest then, and until some national convention declares as the voice of the Democratic party of the nation that silver is dishonest money, I deny the right of any man, elected to any office, to denounce and ostracise silver as dishonest money; I care not what his position or what his rank. (Hisses.)

"Mr. Gladstone said the other day that England was opposed to silver, was opposed to bimetallism, because England was a creditor nation, and because she gained by the appreciation of the dollar caused by the rise in gold, and because of that selfish interest that England would not be in favor of bimetallism because she wanted to get the dollar fatter every day in payment for the debts we owe. I want to ask you if it is to the interest of the American people to give her that dollar that grows fatter at the expense of the toilers of the United States. (Cries of No,' 'No.')

"In these United States there are $132,000,000 upon farm mortgages. They tell us we must not speak of indebtedness. No, it is better to suffer from it than to mention it and to correct

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the wrong. They call us calamity howlers because we dare to suggest that that is a large debt. You make that dollar larger by appreciation; run it up until a gold ounce will exchange for twice as much as it will to-day and by legislation you fix upon this people a debt of $132,000,000 that they never contracted; you fix it to their disadvantage and to the advantage of the man that holds the note. You tell me it is not a sectional question; but, my friends, when a gentleman from Connecticut stands upon the floor of Congress and says, 'I want gold because my people loan money and I am interested in their getting as good a dollar as I can,' I tell you I will be sectional enough to stand upon the floor and say that my people owe money and you will never collect a bigger dollar than we borrowed if I can help it, so help me God! (Applause.) I will not detain you longer -(Cries of 'Go on' 'Go on!')—I will not detain you longer and enter into a discussion of this question which would go over the whole merits of it. It would require more time than you have to give. But, my friends, you know what the arguments are; you have heard them day by day, and you know that if we would put it to vote in the State of Nebraska and let every man write upon his ballot whether he wanted to use gold and silver, or wanted to repeal the Sherman law to aid some foreign nation in the use of a single standard, you know and I know that not only the

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