is there, or has there ever been,
a more honest body of citizenship than the millions of Americans who
to-day are toiling on the farms and in the workshops of the country
and who demand from the laws they obey nothing but equity and justice.
It was easier, and more pleasant to those who heard him, to wrong
these men with a sneer than to answer them with an argument. He might
possibly have done well to relinquish this task to one who sat near
him, his ex-Secretary of the Treasury, who had himself, in 1878,
discovered something that _he_ thought a crime and had thus denounced
it: "According to my views of the subject the conspiracy which seems
to have been formed here and in Europe to destroy, by legislation and
otherwise, from three-sevenths to one-half the metallic money of the
world, is the most gigantic crime of this or any other age."

The speech of Mr. Carlisle was notable for stating his position more
extremely than he had previously done since his apostasy. He boldly
takes the stand logically demanded by consistency in the man who
opposes silver coinage and denies the arguments based on the
appreciation of gold. He comes out squarely for the gold standard and
places bimetallism of any and all sorts under a common ban. But alas!
what a sorry appearance he makes. Nowhere in our political history do
I find quite so pathetic a figure as that presented by this once
strong and virile champion of the people's rights in his contrasted
role of defender of their oppressors. Where now is that compact and
cogent argument, that sincere and moving eloquence, which made his
forensic style so singularly effective; which marked him the
parliamentary darling of his party, a predestined president of the
republic? Shrunken to the dreary platitudes of the gold-standard
catechism, babbling of "sound currency" and "intrinsic value."

This talk of intrinsic value was not confined to Mr. Carlisle. Mr.
Patterson, of Tennessee, and Senator Caffery, of Louisiana, were
likewise guilty of it. It is, indeed, the characteristic folly of
their school. Having destroyed the money demand for silver while
adding almost incalculably to that for gold, they have caused an
increasing disparity in the values of the two metals; and now, when it
is sought to restore the parity by restoring the equivalence of use
and demand on which alone it depends, they pretend to have discovered
some inherent perfection in gold and an original sin in silver which
forbi