1896.
LADIES and Gentlemen: This is our country.
The legally expressed will of the majority is the supreme law of the land. We are responsible for what our Government does. We cannot excuse ourselves because of the act of some king, or the opinions of nobles. We are the kings. We are the nobles. We are the aristocracy of America, and when our Government does right we are honored, and when our Government does wrong the brand of shame is on the American brow.
Again we are on the field of battle, where thought contends with thought, the field of battle where facts are bullets and arguments are swords.
To-day there is in the United States a vast congress consisting of the people, and in that congress every man has a voice, and it is the duty of every man to inquire into all questions presented, to the end that he may vote as a man and as a patriot should.
No American should be dominated by prejudice. No man standing under our flag should follow after the fife and drum of a party. He should say to himself: "I am a free man, and I will discharge the obligations of an American citizen with all the intelligence I possess."
I love this country because the people are free; and if they are not free it is their own fault.
To-night I am not going to appeal to your prejudices, if you have any. I am going to talk to the sense that you have. I am going to address myself to your brain and to your heart. I want nothing of you except that you will preserve the institutions of the Republic; that you will maintain her honor unstained. That is all I ask.
I admit that all the parties who disagree with me are honest. Large masses of mankind are always honest, the leader not always, but the mass of people do what they believe to be right. Consequently there is no argument in abuse, nothing calculated to convince in calumny. To be kind, to be candid, is far nobler, far better, and far more American. We live in a Democracy, and we admit that every other human being has the same right to think, the same right to express his thought, the same right to vote that we have, and I want every one who hears me to vote in exact accord with his sense, to cast his vote in accordance with his conscience. I want every one to do the best he can for the great Republic, and no matter how he votes, if he is honest, I shall find no fault.
But the great thing is to understand what you are going to do; the great thing is to use the little sense that we have. In most of us the capital is small, and it ought to be turned often. We ought to pay attention, we ought to listen to what is said and then think, think for ourselves.