Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 10.djvu/199

 reverse. The concluding paragraph of the message means, if it means anything, that after you shall have totally demonetized silver by repealing this Sherman Act, you will be required to go further in the same direction; and 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.

My prediction is that in order to carry out the recommendations of that message we shall be called upon to sell bonds to procure gold. For what? To redeem all our pecuniary obligations, according to the very language of that message, in that money which is recognized by the principal nations of the world. Why did not the president say "gold"? We know what his language means. You are asked to load up the federal Treasury with gold, to redeem every pecuniary obligations to the government with gold, altho the standard silver dollar is the identical dollar on which bond obligations were based when they were issued, because they called for coin of the standard value at the time of their issue, and that was standard.

But now, I repeat, we shall have to redeem all this bullion, all these Sherman notes in gold; we shall have to sell bonds to get gold to redeem all our greenbacks, all our silver certificates, and we will be compelled to carry our silver dollars as so much dead weight of bullion in the Treas-