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about coin. Notwithstanding the declarations of the monometallists; notwithstanding the assaults that have been made by those who are in favor of still further increasing the value of the standard by which their possessions are measured, they know that money is neither wealth, nor capital, nor value, and that it is merely the creation of the law by which all these are estimated and measured.

We speak, sir, about the volume of money, and about its relation to the wealth and capital of the country. Let me ask you, sir, for a moment, what would occur if the circulating medium were to be destroyed? Suppose that the gold and silver were to be withdrawn suddenly from circulation and melted up into bars and ingots and buried in the earth from which they were taken. Suppose that all the paper money, silver certificates, gold certificates, national bank notes, treasury notes, were stacked in one mass at the end of the treasury building and the torch applied to them, and they were to be destroyed by fire, and their ashes scattered, like the ashes of Wyclif, upon the Potomac, to be spread abroad, wide as its waters be.

What would be the effect? Would not this country be worth exactly as much as it is to-day? Would there not be just as many acres of land, as many houses, as many farms, as many days of labor, as much improved and unimproved merchandise, and as much property as there is to-day? The result would be that commerce would languish, the sails of the ships would be furled in the harbors, the great trains would cease to run to and fro on their errands, trade would be reduced to barter, and, the people finding their energies languishing, civilization itself would droop, and we should be reduced to the condition of the nomadic wanderers upon the primeval plains.

Suppose, on the other hand, that instead of being destroyed, all the money in this country were to be put in the possession of a single man-gold, and paper, and silver— and he were to be moored in mid-Atlantic upon a raft with his great hoard, or to be stationed in the middle of Sahara's desert without food to nourish, or shelter to cover, or the means of transportation to get away. Who would be the richest man, the possessor of the gigantic treasure or the humblest settler upon the plains of the West, with a dugout to shelter him, and with corn meal and water enough for his daily bread?

Doubtless, Mr. President, you search the Scriptures daily, and are therefore familiar with the story of those depraved politicians of Judea who sought to entangle the Master in His talk, by asking Him if it were lawful to pay tribute to Cæsar or not. He, perceiving the purpose that they had in view, said unto them, "Show me the tribute money"; and they brought him a penny. He said, "Whose is this image and superscription?" and they replied, "Cæsar's"; and He said, "Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, and unto God the things that are God's."

I hold, Mr. President, between my thumb and finger, a silver denarius, or "penny," of that ancient time—perhaps the identical coin that was brought by the hypocritical Herodian-bearing the image and superscription of Cæsar. It has been money for more than twenty centuries. It was money when Jesus walked the waves and in the tragic hour at Gethsemane. Imperial Cæsar is "dead and turned to clay." He has yielded to a mightier conqueror, and his eagles, his ensigns, and his trophies are indistinguishable dust. His triumphs and his victories are a schoolboy's tale. Rome herself is but a memory. Her marble porticos and

temples and palaces are in ruins. The sluggish monk and the lazy Roman lazzaroni haunt the Senate House and the Coliseum, and the derisive owl wakes the echoes of the voiceless Forum. But this little contemporary disk of silver is money still, because it bears the image and superscription of Cæsar. And, sir, it will continue to be money for twenty centuries more, should it resist so long the corroding canker and the gnawing tooth of time. But if one of these pages should take this coin to the railway track, as boys sometimes do, and allow the train to pass over it, in one single instant its function would be destroyed. It would contain as many grains of silver as before, but it would be money no longer, because the image and superscription of Cæsar had disappeared.

Mr. President, money is the creation of law, and the American people have learned that lesson, and they are indifferent to the assaults, they are indifferent to the arguments, they are indifferent to the aspersions which are cast upon them for demanding that the law of the United States. shall place the image and superscription of Cæsar upon silver enough and gold enough and paper enough to enable them to transact without embarrassment, without hindrance, without delay, and without impoverishment their daily business affairs, and that shall give them a measure of values that will not make their earnings and their belongings the sport and the prey of speculators.

Mr. President, this contest can have but one issue. The experiment that has begun will not fail. It is useless to deny that many irregularities have been tolerated here; that many crimes have been committed in the sacred name of liberty; that our public affairs have been scandalous. episodes to which every patriotic heart reverts with distress;

that there have been envy and jealousy in high places; that there have been treacherous and lying platforms; that there have been shallow compromises and degrading concessions to popular errors; but, amid all these disturbances, amid all these contests, amid all these inexplicable aberrations, the path of the nation has been steadily onward.

At the beginning of our second century we have entered upon a new social and political movement whose results can not be predicted, but which are certain to be infinitely momentous. That the progress will be upward I have no doubt. Through the long and desolate tract of history, through the seemingly aimless struggles, the random gropings of humanity, the turbulent chaos of wrong, injustice, crime, doubt, want, and wretchedness, the dungeon and the block, the inquisition and the stake, the trepidations of the oppressed, the bloody exultations and triumph of tyrants,

The uplifted ax, the agonizing wheel,

Luke's iron crown and Damien's bed of steel,—

the tendency has been toward the light. Out of every conflict some man or sect or nation has emerged with higher privileges, greater opportunities, purer religion, broader liberty, and greater capacity for happiness; and out of this conflict in which we are now engaged I am confident finally will come liberty, justice, equality; the continental unity of the American republic, the social fraternity and the industrial independence of the American people.

AGAINST CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

BY ROBESPIERRE

The news having been brought to Athens that Athenian citizens had been sentenced to death in the town of Argos, the people hastened to the temples to implore the gods to divert the Athenians from thoughts so cruel and so baleful. I come to urge, not the gods, but the legislators, who should be the organ and the interpreters of the eternal laws the Divinity has dictated to men, to strike from the French code the laws of blood, which command judicial murderwhich are repugnant to their habits and their new Constitution. I will prove to them: First, that the death penalty is essentially unjust; secondly, that it is not the most repressive of punishments, and that it increases crimes much more than it prevents them.

Outside of civil society, let an inveterate enemy attempt to take my life, or, twenty times repulsed, let him again return to devastate the field my hands have cultivated. Inasmuch as I can only oppose my individual strength to his, I must perish or I must kill him, and the law of natural defense justifies and approves me. But in society, when the strength of all is armed against one single individual, what principle of justice can authorize it to put him to death? What necessity can there be to absolve it? A conqueror who causes the death of his captive enemies is called a barbarian! A man who causes a child that he can disarm and punish, to be strangled, appears to us a monster! A prisoner that society convicts is at the utmost to that society but a vanquished, powerless, and harmless enemy. He is

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