We brand the recent opening of the African slave trade under the cover of our national flag, aided by perversions of judicial power, as a crime against humanity and a burning shame to our country and age.

That is what the platform said. It declared that a certain decision of the court was a perversion of judicial power. There is no language in our platform which is so severe on the Supreme Court as that Republican platform.

On these two questions we are assailed by the Republicans today. We have not taken as emphatic a stand as the Republican party took in the first platform on which it elected a President of the United States. Let me read to you now what Abraham Lincoln said about the Supreme Court. This is not a party platform, nor is it an extract from a speech uttered upon the spur of the moment. I read to you from a State paper-from the inaugural address of Abraham Lincoln:

I do not forget the position assumed by some that Constitutional questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court; nor do I deny that such decisions must be binding in any case upon the parties to the suit as to the object of that suit, while they are also entitled to very high respect and consideration in all parallel cases by all other departments of the Government. At the same time the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government on vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by the decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal action the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of the eminent tribunal.

Mr. Lincoln says that if it is meant to be asserted that the Supreme Court has a right to determine the policy of the people on great questions, then the people will have resigned our Government into the hands of the Supreme Court. Nothing in our platform is as harsh as the language of Abraham Lincoln. We do not criticise that court as he criticises it-and remember that when he used the words which I have quoted he was President.

I quote these authorities, my friends, that you may see how far-fetched is the criticism which is directed against us. I quote these things to show you that the people who use the criticism against us must, in order to do so, abandon the Republican platform upon which Lincoln was elected. But I must apologize for having quoted Abraham Lincoln as Republican authority. He is no longer a Republican authority. Abraham Lincoln believed in a government of the people, by the people and for the people, and that is not Republicanism in this campaign.

Our opponents say we are opposed to the enforcement of the law, but the fact is that many of our opponents are afraid that the law will be enforced. They remind me of the man in court. He seemed to be uneasy, and when the judge assured him that he would get justice in that court, he replied: "Great Heavens, Judge, that's what I am afraid of."

Let me read to you what a distinguished Democrat once said:

They say that we are trying to destroy our institutions. We, who now address you, have been the peculiar objects of these imputations. We pause, therefore, for a moment to repel them. We entertain no sentiments adverse to social order; we seek not to destroy, but to preserve in their purity the institutions of our country.

Whose language do you suppose that is? That is the language which Samuel J. Tilden used many years ago in addressing the farmers, workingmen and mechanics. They accused reformers then of being disturbers of the

peace, and he asserted then as we now assert that the purpose is not to destroy, but to save the Government which we love.

They had just such a contest in those days as we have now. Let me read again from Mr. Tilden's speech:

A powerful moneyed corporation engaged in a death struggle with a government to whom it owed its existence assailed the purity of our press. A mighty combination of politicians and moneyed interests is again in the field to control elections, to change the administration of government, and to re-establish the supremacy of the great moneyed corporations over the business of the country.

My friends, if he had lived today he could not have described the opposition to the free coinage of silver in more accurate terms than he then described the moneyed interests. He also said that by their control of the currency they spread far and wide dismay, misery and ruin, in order to extort a renewal of the powers and privileges which they then enjoyed from the fears and necessities of the community. That same moneyed power exists today, and it is doing the same work today that it did then, and business men are terrified. Men who owe money are threatened with bankruptcy unless they sell their citizenship. If a banker dares to have an opinion of his own, he is menaced with ruin. Your banker tells you what you must do, and his banker tells him what he must do, and you can trace it all back to the great money center in England, and from that center those who corner the money of the world reach out and threaten to lay a paralyzing hand on all the industry of the world if the people dare to have opinions of their own. Tilden said that the patriotic firmness of a virtuous people prevailed in that struggle. I believe that the patriotism and firmness of a patriotic people will prevail in this struggle. To think otherwise would be to despair of a government like this. We cannot have a free government unless the people are free to act. If a majority of the people must obtain consent from a few people before they can act, then they are agents, not sovereigns, and we have a democracy merely in form-and a plutocracy in fact, which is the worst form of government.

Let me read another extract from Mr. Tilden:

Banded together by the same unity of interests, arraying them in an organized mass which acts and operates through all the ramifications of society, constituting property by monopoly and perpetuities, and binding to it political power, it has established an aristocracy more potent, more permanent and more oppressive than any other which has ever existed-such is the dynasty of associated and privileged wealth, which is the ruling power at present in nearly every civilized nation.

I repeat his words today. A government by associated wealth, a government by corporation, is the most tyrannical government that any people can suffer from.

Judge William J. Gaynor presided at this meeting, and Hon. James G. Bell, chairman of the Kings County Democratic Committee, Hon. Bernard J. York, and many other prominent citizens occupied seats on the platform.

After a brief speech at the overflow meeting, just outside of the hall, I went to the Claremont rink and addressed a large audience of

laboring men who had assembled. The hour was late and the speech. was not long.

Here and on several other occasions I referred to the Bismarck letter, which was widely circulated, especially among the German speaking portion of our people. As there has been some discussion in regard to the English version of it, I give below the translation which appeared in the Cincinnati Weekly Enquirer of October 8th. The letter, which was drawn out by an inquiry addressed to him by Governor Charles A. Culberson, of Texas, July 1, reads as follows:

The Bismarck Letter.

Friedrichsruhe, August 24, 1896.

To His Excellency, Mr. Charles A. Culberson, Governor of Texas, Austin, Texas, U. S. A.-Honored Sir: Your esteemed writing of July 1, of this year, I have received.

I have always had a preference for bimetallism, without considering myself infallible over against experts on the subject, while I was in office, and I believe today it is commendable to bring about an agreement between the nations chiefly engaged in the world's commerce in the direction of bimetallism.

The United States are commercially freer in their movements than any single one of the European nations, and if North America should find it compatible with its interests to take an independent step in the direction of bimetallism I do believe it would have appreciable influence upon the establishment of international agreement and the conjunction of the European States. With the assurance of my most distinguished esteem, I am Your Excellency's most devoted servant. V. Bismarck.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

T

IN NEW ENGLAND.

HURSDAY a committee consisting of Editor Alexander Troop and Mr. C. S. Bennett, of New Haven, William Kennedy and other representatives from the Nutmeg State took our party in charge, and the journey through New England began.

The first stop was made at Bridgeport, where a brief speech was delivered in the public square. Here we were met by Hon. John B. Sargent of New Haven, late Democratic candidate for Governor. We arrived at New Haven shortly after noon. The Yale incident made this the best advertised meeting held in New England. A number of the college boys insisted on showing their disapproval, beginning before I had a chance to say anything. I give the speech, with interruptions, as it appeared in the New York Journal of the next morning:

Yale College Incident.

I am glad that there are students here, because I want to say a word to students. Your college has helped to add fame to your city, and those who assemble here are supposed to come in order that they may better equip themselves for the duties of life. I am glad to talk to students, because, my friends, we have a cause which appeals to students. If the syndicates and corporations rule this country, then no young man has a fair show unless he is the favorite of a corporation. (Applause-and yells for McKinley by a cordon of the students.) If the people have a right to govern themselves and exercise that right, then every citizen has an equal chance and every man may achieve what he desires. We wish to leave all the avenues open so that the son of the humblest citizen may aspire to the highest position within the gift of the people. (Applause and yells repeated.)

I am not speaking now to the sons who are sent to college on the proceeds of ill-gotten gains. (Enthusiastic applause.) I wil wait until these sons have exhausted what their fathers have left them and then appeal to their chlidren who will have to commence life where their grandfathers commenced. (Great applause.) My friends, a just government is best for the great masses of the people. Equal laws and equal opportunities are best for nine out of every ten of us. (Yells again repeated.) Therefore, our cause appeals to every young man who wants to make this Government so good as to deserve the love, confidence and the support of every citizen in this land.

We appeal not only to the students; we appeal to business men who have been terrorized by the financial-what may I call it? (Applause.) People

have been tyrannized over by financial institutions until in some instances it is more dangerous to raise your voice against the ruling power than it is in an absolute monarchy. (Great applause and yells.) If there is anybody who loves this sort of thing then I shall offend him by speaking of it, but I shall not offend any man who loves liberty and the right of free speech in this country. (Great applause.)

The business men have been told that the free coinage of silver would ruin them. If it can ruin them with more rapidity than the gold standard has ruined them, then, my friends, it will be bad, indeed, because the gold standard has increased the number of failures among business men, and every step that has been taken has been followed— (Yells from the students.) I have been so used to talking to young men who earn their own living that I do not know (Great applause and cheering.) I say, I have been so used to talking to young men who earn their own living that I hardly know what language to use to address myself to those who desire to be known, not as creators of wealth, but as the distributers of wealth which somebody else created. (Great applause and cheering.) If you will show me a young man who has been taught to believe (More yells and cries of "McKinley.")

In all my travels I have not found a crowd that needed talking to so much as this crowd does. (Cries of "That's right.") I came to this city something more than a year ago, and I then learned something of the domination of your financial classes. I have seen it elsewhere, but, my friends, the great mass of the people even of this city, will be better off under bimetallism that permits the nation to grow, than under a gold standard which starves everybody except the money changer and the money owner.

We sometimes out West are instructed by your insurance companies. I carry insurance in old line companies and in what are known as the mutual or assessment companies. I carry insurance in fraternal organizations like the United Workmen and the Modern Woodmen, as well as in the old line companies, and I am glad that my assessment companies are satisfied to take my money and give me insurance without attempting to tell me how I must vote. Your old line companies have seen fit to insult the intelligence of the people by attempting to exercise a guardian care, notwithstanding the fact that we are able to look after ourselves without their instructions.

You have laboring men also in large numbers in this city. I do not know whether the advocates of the gold standard here who employ men in the shops insist upon telling their employes how to vote. I have in other places found employers who would put in envelopes the pay for the day's work or week's work, and then print on the outside of the envelopes some instructions to the employes. If the manufacturer, employer, or railroad president feels that there must be something on the outside of the envelope as well as upon the inside, let him write on the outside: "You will find within your wages. They are to cover your work. We recognize that the men who have sense enough to do the work we want done have sense enough to vote right, without our telling them how to vote."

I notice that in some places they have been organizing sound money clubs, and they have the applicant sign a statement, saying that the free coinage of silver would hurt him in his business as a wage earner. I have wondered