Richard Parks Bland
Richard Parks Bland
Richard Parks Blandwas an American politician, lawyer, and educator from Missouri. A Democrat, Bland served in the United States Congress a total of twenty-four years between 1873 and 1899, representing at various times the Missouri 5th, 8th and 11th congressional districts. Nicknamed "Silver Dick" for his efforts to promote a United States return to bimetallism and an advocate of the free silver movement, Bland is best known for the Bland–Allison Act. The act, passed over President Rutherford B. Hayes veto...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth19 August 1835
CountryUnited States of America
What is the effect of unlimited coinage of silver in this country? and I invite your attention to this particularly, because it is a question of vital importance.
Are you to give up the fight and let this vast body of our wealth go to ruin? I do not believe it.
We invite, then, the world to come with its silver and make the exchange.
Will you stand by it now, or will you let the Shylocks come and have their way? It is for you to determine.
The aristocracy of Western Europe has absolutely tabooed silver in those countries and driven it away from there. Here it finds its only resting place.
Many now born, by the time they are voters will compose part of a nation with a genius nowhere equaled, and with a vast territory upon which those energies and that genius can operate.
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.
It means that the silver coins of the United States at whatever ratio is fixed, and I want the present ratio that we have now, 16 to 1, maintained precisely as it is.
We know well enough that if we repeal this law and give nothing for it, the people of this country will regard it as a total demonetization of silver, which it will be, so far as this Congress is concerned, without any question.
Any political party that undertakes to do it will, in God's name, be trampled, as it ought to be trampled, into the dust of condemnation, now and in the future.
Speaking as a Democrat, all my life battling for what I conceived to be Democracy, and what I conceived to be right, I am yet an American above Democracy.
Now, mark it. This may be strong language, but heed it. The people mean it, and, my friends of the Eastern Democracy, we bid farewell when you do that thing.
It is because the administration is hostile to silver; and thus it is surrendering this country to the Shylocks of the Old World who have made war upon it.
It can not be done; it shall not be done! I speak for the great masses of the Mississippi Valley, and those west of it, when I say you shall not do it!