The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-04-16
BY SAVOYARD

agreement could silver be rehabilitated and made "basic money"
 But when the silver question threat ened to crowd the tariff out of the paromuntcy, as the theft of the pres idency did in 1877, MT. Carlisle set about thorough study of the coinage problem. He was a genius-a won derful intellect-and ordinarily his mind saw things as they were at a glance, but he could also labor like an OK when at study and he rose from the contemplation of the silver 'ques- tion as pronounced monomentalist as Tilden of Cleveland, and far more pronounced gold man than John Sher- man or Ben Harrison. And such Car lisle continued to the end, and his uf- terances on the subject were the clear est and the ablest ever delivered in the western hemisphere.
 know they lied about him as few men have been lied on. I'll tell you a cock and bull story I heard man mar rate about a year ago. It was this: Carlisle opposed the issue of bonds while he was Secretary of the Treasury and proposed to put himself at the head of the silver party. if some mem Der of the Kentucky delegation in the Tifty-third Congress would resign and cause his constituency to elect Car lisle to Congress in his stead, to cham pion 16 to l. The delegation met and drew lots and 1t fell to Asher Caruth to resign, who agreed; but by this time Carlisle raised his bid aud said he must have Joe Blackburn's seat in the Sen ate, but Joe peremptorily refused and thus Carlisle was thrown into the arms of Wall street. There never was q bigger lie invented by the devil him self than that, unless 1t was the one that J. Pierpont Morgan was fool enough to give Secretary Carlisle a bribe of $12.Oo0,0O0 cash paid in gold to sell him at a premium of s65.0oo,O 900 bonds payable in coin, either gold or silver. Thousands of folks believed that, too, and yet the authorities let such people go at large.
 Carlisle's friends defied the silverites to print entire Carlisles speech which they garbled and which practical for gery was responsible for the common error that Carlisle was deserter from the silver cause As I said his or iginal view was that there should be free coinage, not at 16 to i, but at the market ratio; but after his luminous mind profoundly meditated on the sub- ject he quickly saw that concurrent free coinage of gold and silver at any fixed ratio whatever had never been practical in any country at any time and that 1t was impossible anywhere and at any time. And on that stubborn fact the democratic party wrecked it. self in 1896!
 Except Henry c. Turner, Mir Carlisle was the gentlest public man of his day. He never allowed his tongue to speak of any one. He never railed against his bitterest enemy. He loved peace and order. He was the gfeatest jurist of his age, and would have been the greatest judge on the bench. While his intellect was frigid in it's logic, he had a keen sense of humor, and if he had been endowed with the aggressive self assertion of many a smaller man would have reached the presidency. President he would have been anyhow, if the silver question had not intermeddled to the anarchy of politics.
 What a. mark for islander he was! He wrote the sugar schedule of the Wilson traiff as 1t passed the House of Representatives in 1894. Then the sugar trust rose in arms and descended on. the Senate and mustered it's cohorts so that when the thing was 'Gormanized" the sugar schedule was perfectly satis- factory to the sugar trust, Then the.