The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1896-07-28
TWO RELIGIOUS VIEWS ON SILVER

Discussion of the silver question has
been taken UP by the religious press.
These discussions do not differ ma
terially from those in the secular
press; some are rabid, some are con-
sentative. Nowhere have we seen
anything more rabid and unreasoning
than this from the Congregationalis of
Boston:
The issue is not whether the candi-
dates are statesmen, not whether the
characterization Of silver by the United
States in 1873 was willful or unin-
territorial wronging Of the debtor and
enriching of the creditor class, net
whether gold has appreciated, and if
so whether it has caused low prices,
not whether the United States can by
its fiat make So cents Of silver worth
100 cents in gold, not whether the tariff
should be for revenue only or for pro-
lection as well, although these are
aspects of the problem which must be,
and will be, considered, but the issue
now is whether cur national obliga-
tons to foreign and native creditors
are to be repudiafed, whether the
executive is to be deprived of all power
to defend the national credit in times
Of stress or popular madness, whether
the federal authority is to be supreme
when state or local authority fails to
cope with organized Iawlessness,
whether the federal judiciary is
to be honored and kept secure
in its life tenure, subject al
ways to good behavior, whether the
civil service is again TO become the
prey Of the spokesman, in short,
whether a revolution backward is to
begin, which would set at naught the
principles which underlie the republic
and civilization.
That sounds like the rawlings of some
miser gone mad through the fear of
losing his boarded gold. The kind
of Christianity which prompts such
writing as this is not the kind that
prompted the Galilean in his dealings
with his fellow men.
In an entirely different spirit does
the Catholic Mirror of Baltimore, the
organ of Cardinal Gibbons, treat the
question. It says:
No man of sense expects either vio-
lence or revolution should Mr. Bryan
do very well to scare timid voters with,
who, if they would calmly analyze the
language, would find the platform ad-
Vocating Democratic doctrine as old as
Jefferson and as sound as the rock of
ages.
Evidently the people do not believe
the dire prophecies of ruin, for while
there is disaffection among the Demo-
cratic leaders, nothing is palmer than
that the silver heresy," already 50
powerful in the west, is making strong
and silent Roadway among the masses
in the east; and this in spite of the
fact that the press is almost uniformly
hostile. The facts are kept back, or,
by a system of interviewing we'll
known, made to wear different aspect
from the true one, and the portenGous
growth of the 16 to doctrine reso-
lutely minimized. This enmity of the
press and the still more formidable
hostility of the money power of
America and Europe which will be ar
rayed solidiy against him, Mr.. Bryan
and his companion on the ticket, Mr..
Sewall, will have to face; and hence
the difficulty of their election. If they
win in the face of such odds it will be
almost by a miracle But still, if sue
cessful they should be we feel certain
that the country is safe and that the
good sense of the American people may
be relied upon as confidently as in the
past. The alarfnists, in truth. have
rather overdone the thing; those Demo-
Gratis who so strenuously object to the
ticket are too much of one complexion;
che plain people" are not the least
but, if anything, rather
exhilarated.
How different these two views of
the silver question by religious pa
pers. There is certainly more modera-
ton and Christian spirit in the, view