The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1886-02-17
A REAL ORATOR.
a Few Paragraphs From the Speech of
Hon. Roger q. Mills, of Texas. ION
the Silver Question.
lCongressional Record.l

Congressional Recordl
Would you take the country again through
that valley of the shadow of death? Would
you repeat again that experience so full of
lamentations and MORNINGS and woes? Ii
you would, listen to the soft, sweet notes OF
the siren as she sings from the vaults of the
National bankers about dishonest dollars.
Drive out into Punishment the old silver dol
lars of our fathers; call in the silver certif-
Gates; retire all the Treasury notes; make
money so scarce that the poor bankers in
New York can buy a bushel of wheat for a
dime, pound of cotton for penny; make
1t impossible for people to pay their debts;
make labor so cheap that working people
can only earn enough TO pay interest to
money-lenders and taxes to support the
Government, and you will see again the re-
turn of that night with all its horrors in
tensifed.
Sir, let the man who lives by the sweat of
his brow and his representative here, be not
deceived by the shams and false pretenses
that are thrown around this measure, that is
filled TO the brim with the direst of cOnse-
quences to millions of people. Let the la
borer remember, and write it on his wrist
let's carve it on his frontlets, and wear it as
an amulet over his heart, that scarce money
is his sleepless and unfOIgiving foe, a foe
whose bosom never swells with sigh of sor-
row, whose eve never moistens with tear OF
pity. No one can deny that it increases the
one can deny that 1t maEes the life struggle
darker and harder.
One of the most distinguished advocates 10
the suppression of silver has but recently
said if we stop coming silver that the act will
be drag upon the production and that suf-
location and strangulation are words not too
strong express the agonies OF people who are
elcircled in the coils OF the golden serpent.
And yet, with our eyes open and looking
down into this abyss Of human suffering that
yawns before us, we are entreated and inn
portHned to drag the country TO the edge of
the precipice and plunge it into the fortunes
and agonies of contration to satiate the lust
for gold. Sir, history has recorded on its
pages every kind of scourge that has been
sent upon mankind from the hand of his fell
low, and it has carved the names of the
guilty wIetches on its pillory where they
stand before the eyes of each recurring gen.
Grafton 10 suffer the execration due the afro
city of the crimes. 1t tells of Nero vainly
struggling to extinguish the truths of
Christianity by lighting the streets of Rome
with the burning bodies OF her missionaries;
of Tamerlane discussing philosophy with
the sages of Aleppo while his savage soldiery
were gathering the heads of his slaughtered
foemen into monumental piles to please the
eyes of the royal invader; 1T tells of Philip
ii. sacking, burning and butchering the
inhabitants of the Netherlands, loyal to his
kingdom and crown, because they elected to
worship at the shrines where conscience babe
them Sneel; it tells OF the obliteration OF
Poland, the partition of its territory, the
Punishment and confinement of its unhappy
people in the caves of Siberia by the scepter-
ed robbers of Russia, Prussia and Austria; 1t
tells of the conquest and long-continued OPP
preston and robbery of Ireland by the Kings,
Parliaments and people of England for 800
years, and that in the face of the Temonstran-
ces of all Christendom still stretches her
victim on the bed of torture.
But in all the wild, reckless, and remorse-
less brutalities that have marked the foot
prints of resistless power there is some ex-
tenuating circumstances that mitlgates the
severity of the punishment due to the crime.
Some have been the product of the fierce pas
sions of war, some from the antipathy that
separates alien races, some from the super
stitions of opposing religions. But the crime
that is now sought to be perpetrated on more
than fifty millions of people comes neither
from the camp of a conqueror, the hand OF
foreigner, nor the altar of an idolator. But
II comes from those in whose veins runs the
blood of common ancestry, who were born
under the same skies, speak the same lam
guage, reared in the same institutions, and
nurtured in the principles of the same re-
ligious faith. 1t comes from the cold,
phiegmatic, marble heart Of avarice-avar-
ice that seeks to impale the whole
land on a bed OF torture 10 crafty the
lust for g9ld IaPplanse]-ayaziss H1uT0ulae q