FREE TRADE SHOULD BE UNDONE.
Eight years ago, and again four years ago, through the influence of the Cobden Club, England attempted to subdue America. She succeeded in prostrating our industries, impoverishing our people, and increasing our public debt, but let us hope that the intelligence of American citizens will rise up in its full might and undo the free trade blunder of 1892. It now looks to me as if there was a gigantic trust of silver kings and English capitalists attempting to again subdue free America. Evidently there never was such a concert of action in the United States as has taken place during the last few months in regard to this silver question. The rapidity with which it has travelled all over this country, to say the least, has been phenomenal. There is an old saying, that "a falsehood will travel a thousand miles while truth is getting its boots on." Fellow citizens, go forth and tell the misguided advocates of free silver and believers in the false theories of "Coin's" Financial School to rejoice in their strength while it is called to-day, for, by the living God "truth has its boots on" and is marching triumphantly out among the people, tearing away the webs and veils of delusion and hypocrisy and appealing to the people, not to their passions, but to their intelligence, their reason and their honor. The people are not ready to advance by going backwards, they are not ready to be Chinaized, to be Japanized, South Americanized, Mexicanized or subsidized by a coterie of silver barons and English capitalists, who are attempting by stealth to nail the wage earners and farmers of this country to an unholy cross of depreciated silver. (Applause.)