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.
Richard Parks Bland
We invite, then, the world to come with its silver and make the exchange.
I make a prediction here and now, and, my friends, I want you to watch the proceedings of Congress in these coming weeks of this extra session, or of the next regular session, to see whether I am right or not.
It is because the administration is hostile to silver; and thus it is surrendering this country to the Shylocks of the Old World who have made war upon it.
The aristocracy of Western Europe has absolutely tabooed silver in those countries and driven it away from there. Here it finds its only resting place.
The last fight for the white metal is to be made here in this country and in this House, my friends.
Will you stand by it now, or will you let the Shylocks come and have their way? It is for you to determine.
Are you to give up the fight and let this vast body of our wealth go to ruin? I do not believe it.
We know well enough that if we repeal this law and give nothing for it, the people of this country will regard it as a total demonetization of silver, which it will be, so far as this Congress is concerned, without any question.
What is the effect of unlimited coinage of silver in this country? and I invite your attention to this particularly, because it is a question of vital importance.
It means that the silver coins of the United States at whatever ratio is fixed, and I want the present ratio that we have now, 16 to 1, maintained precisely as it is.
Many now born, by the time they are voters will compose part of a nation with a genius nowhere equaled, and with a vast territory upon which those energies and that genius can operate.
It can not 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 will, in God's name, be trampled, as it ought to be trampled, into the dust of condemnation, now and in the future.
Speaking as a Democrat, all my life battling for what I conceived to be Democracy, and what I conceived to be right, I am yet an American above Democracy.
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.
