But they say, "There is one thing that we know we are right on, and that is the free coinage of silver." Every man who holds 85 cents worth of silver shall go to the Treasury or the mints of the United States and take a certificate of deposit for 100 cents, which shall pass as money. This was the Warner bill. This the Democratic party as a party was committed to, and is committed to, and on the very last day of the extra session by a majority vote of one, and only one, in the Senate of the United States we substantially laid that bill upon the table, every Republican voting aye, and every Democrat, except four or five, voting no. [Applause.] Now, to-day, the laboring man can take gold or silver or paper, as he chooses, for his day's labor. I am in favor of the dual standard. I am in favor of a silver dollar with 100 cents in it. I am in favor of an honest dollar anywhere you can find it [cheers], and I stand by an honest dollar. To-day the laboring man can take gold or silver or paper, and they are all of equal value, because they are all interchangeable into each other. The paper dollar costs nothing; a silver dollar costs the government 85 cents—a fraction more now; it has been a fraction less. But all three are of equal value. Now the very moment you commence issuing those certificates of deposit freely to every man having bullion you banish gold from your circulating medium and make it an article of traffic and nothing else; and you have but a single standard, and that is a depreciated standard. Now there is paid out in these United States every day for labor alone $4,000,000. By compelling the substitution of the silver dollar alone, you swindle the laboring man out of $600,000 a day. The laboring man who receives a dollar gets but 85 cents. The man who receives $10 a week gets $8.50, and no more. The farmer who sells a horse, or the man who sells a load of lumber, or a load of wheat, or anything else amounting to $100, receives but $85, and no more. You have but one single standard, and that the silver standard, which, having banished gold, is worth precisely the metal that is in it. Who is benefited by this substitution? Why, my friends, not a living mortal is benefited, except the bullion-owner and the bullion-speculator. I do not charge these men with being bribed to pass that law, because I have no proof of it; but I do say that the bullion-owners and the bullion-speculators can afford to pay $10,000,000 in bullion for the privilege of swindling the laboring men of the country out of 15 per cent. of all their earnings. [Applause.] They say, "That may all be true; we don't know how it is; we have not been bribed"—and I never knew a man that would own up that he was bribed in my life. [Laughter.] I don't say that they are, but I do say that they are engaged in a mighty mean business. [Laughter and applause.]
But there is another question which is of vital interest to every man, woman and child in America, and that is this question of the enormous rebel claims against your government. I hold in my hand a list of the claims now before the two houses of Congress, and being pressed—cotton claims, claims for the destruction of property, for quartermaster's stores, for every conceivable thing that war could produce. I have a list of claims right here [holding up several sheets of paper containing names and amounts] aggregating many hundreds of millions. And the only thing to-day—the Senate and the House both being under the control of those Southern rebels—the only protection, the only barrier between the Treasury of the United States and those rebel claims is a presidential veto [cheers], and thank God for the veto! [Long-continued applause.] But these claims are not all. There are claims innumerable which they dare not yet present. You may go through every State in the South, and somewhere, hidden away, you will find a claim for every slave that ever was liberated. In the files of the Senate and the House you will find demands for untold millions of dollars to improve streams that do not exist—where you will have to pump the water to get up a stream at all. [Laughter and applause.] Demands for untold millions to build the levees of the Mississippi river! We have already given the Southern people 32,000,000 of acres of land which would be reclaimed by those levees, and now they propose to bankrupt your Treasury by telling you, people of the North, to build the levees to make the lands which you gave them valuable.
To show you that I am not over-stating this idea of Southern claims, I will read you a petition which is now being circulated throughout the South:
"We, the people of the United States, most respectfully petition your honorable bodies to enact a law by which all citizens of every section of the United States may be paid for all their property destroyed by the governments and armies on both sides, during the late war between the States, in bonds, bearing 3 per cent. interest per annum, maturing within the next one hundred years."
Every soldier who served in the Northern army has been paid. Every dollar's worth of property furnished to the Northern army has been paid for. Every widow or orphan of a wounded soldier entitled to a pension has been pensioned, so that there is no claim from the North; but this means that you shall do for the South precisely what you have done for your own soldiers.
But I have not yet reached the milk in this cocoa-nut. [Laughter.]
"And we also petition that all soldiers, or their legal representatives, of both armies and every section, be paid in bonds or public lands for their lost time [laughter], limbs, and lives while engaged in the late unfortunate civil conflict." [Laughter and applause.]
That all soldiers be paid for their lost time while fighting to overthrow your government! That they shall be paid for their lost limbs and their lost lives while fighting to overthrow your government!
Ah, my fellow-citizens, they are in sober, serious, downright earnest. They have captured both houses of Congress, and the only obstacle to the payment of these infamous claims is the presidential veto, and there is not a man before me who has not a personal, direct interest in seeing to it that the rebels do not capture the balance of Washington. [Applause.] These rebel States are solid—solid for repudiating your debt, solid for paying these rebel claims; they have repudiated their individual debts through the bankrupt law; they have repudiated their State debts by scaling, and then refusing to pay the interest on what has been scaled; they have repudiated their municipal debts by repealing the charters of their cities, towns, and villages. And do you think they are more anxious to pay the debt contracted for their subjugation than they are to pay their own honest debts? I tell you, No. They mean repudiation, and do not mean that your debt shall be of any more value than their own. When you trust them you are making a mistake, and I do not believe you will ever do it again. [Laughter and applause, and voices: "We won't!">[
But we have a matter under consideration to-night of vastly more importance than all the financial questions that can be presented to you, and that is, Is this or is it not a Nation! We had supposed for generations that this was a Nation. Our fathers met in convention to frame a constitution, and they found some difficulty in agreeing upon the details of that constitution, and for a time it was a matter of extreme doubt whether any agreement could be reached. Acrimonious debate took place in that convention, but finally a spirit of compromise prevailed, and the constitution was adopted by the convention and submitted to the people of these United States. Not to the States, but to the people of the United States, and the people of the United States adopted the constitution that was framed by the fathers, and for many long years the whole people of the United States believed that we had a Government. The whisky rebellion broke out in Pennsylvania, and was put down by the strong arm of the Government, and we still believed that we had a Government. We continued in that belief until the days of General Jackson, when South Carolina raised the flag of rebellion against the Government. Armed men trod the soil of South Carolina and threatened that unless the tariff was modified to suit their views they would overthrow the Government. This was under the leadership of John C. Calhoun, in carrying out his doctrine. Old General Jackson took his pipe out of his mouth when he was told that Calhoun was in rebellion against the Government, and said: "Let South Carolina commit the first act of treason against this Government, and, by the Eternal, I will hang John C. Calhoun!" and every man, woman, and child in America, including Calhoun, knew that he would do it, and the first act of treason was not committed against the Government, for even the State of South Carolina, under the leadership of John C. Calhoun, had bowed to its power.