The Cape Girardeau Democrat. (Cape Girardeau, Mo.) 1876-1909, 1897-04-24
REPUTATION AND olsAonoR.
A Part of Henry Ward Bsecher's Best
Sermons,

uIF AMI
A Part of Henry ward Bsecher's Best
Sermons.
During the fat money and unlimited
paper currency excitement of 1877 Mr..
Beecher delivered a famous sermon ON
Thanksgiving Of that year on the perils
Of the day. In it he used this language:
whenever in any nation there is
such an attempt to tamper with stand
ards that the moral sense Of man is be-
wildered and liberty is given to unprin-
cipled men at large to cheat, to be I'M
faithful to obligations, to refuse the
payment of honest debts-whenever
that takes place, it is all the worse If
done with the permission of the law.
I hate the devil riding on a law worse
than I do the devil riding without q
law under him. Whoever hampers with
established standards hampers with the
very marrow and vitality of public
faith. y The danger into which
we T running is hidden under the
mystery of finance and the currency.
All money is but a representative Of
property. As now, by facility of inter
course, all the world is one open mar
ket, the need Of one and the same stand
ard of money, uniform, universal and
u~nalterably becomes imperious.
Sold is the worlds standard. Gold
is the universal measure of value. Other
kinds of money there are-silver, cop
per, ~paper-but they all must conform
to gold and be measured by it and be
interchangeable with it, in fixed and
definite proportions. Gold is king in
commerce. All other money must rep
resent gold. No vote of legislature can
change the nature Of commerce, the
nature of property, the nature of Its
representative in money or the relative
superiority or inferiority of different
c~urrencies. Gold came to its supremacy
Us a representative of property by the
long-established consent of mankind.
Congress cannot change it for the
world, nor even for this nation, except
upon past transactions. 1t may give
impunity to men to cheat confiding
creditors, but it cannot rule the value of
currency in all future transactions.
"The crime Of paying a debt in a cur
rency inferior in value to that in which
it was contracted, base at all times and
anywhere, has a deeper guilt and a
baser infamy in our case. When in our
mortal struggle capitalists were solicit
ed to lend their money to us or the faith
of the nation, we were too glad, most
grateful, for their aid. Then they were
not grasping and swollen usurers. Oh,
no! They were benefactors. We re-
joiced in their bounty and gave thanks
for their c~onfiding faith in our national
honesty. Now. our dangers past, we
revile them. finding no epithets too vio-
lent, and strive to pay them, not gold
for the gold they lent our misery, but
in q dishonest measure of an inferior
metal.
"In the court of the commercial
worlds conscience we shall be convict
ed of endeavoring to cheat the men who
came to u rescue in the dark day.
This congress would not have existed,
nor any government of the United
States, but for the strength given TO our
armies by foreign capitalists, and now
10 return their aid by a base treachery
is to deserve an infamy as deep as the
lowest depths of hell. But woe to those
men, bull-headed. without eyes, who are
attempting to undermine the integrity
and simplicity of the nation"