In the notification speech delivered by Mr. Stone at Madison Square Garden in New York on August 12, the Democratic party was represented as the champion of the masses and their leader as "a plain man of the people." He defended the men of the Chicago convention against the charge of being cranks, anarchists, and socialists, declaring them to be the representatives of the industrial and producing classes who constituted "the solid strength and safety of the state" against the combined aggressions of foreign money changers and Anglicized American millionaires--"English toadies and the pampered minions of corporate rapacity." Against the selfish control of the privileged classes, he placed the sovereignty of the people, declaring that within both of the old parties there was a mighty struggle for supremacy between those who stood for the sovereignty of the people and those who believed in "the divinity of pelf." He took pride in the fact that the convention represented "the masses of the people, the great industrial and producing masses of the people. It represented the men who plow and plant, who fatten herds, who toil in shops, who fell forests, and delve in mines. But are these to be regarded with contumely and addressed in terms of contempt? Why, sir, these are the men who feed and clothe the nation; whose products make up the sum of our exports; who produce the wealth of the republic; who bear the heaviest burdens in times of peace; who are ready always to give their lifeblood for their country's flag--in short, these are the men whose sturdy arms and faithful hands uphold the stupendous fabric of our civilization." Mr. Bryan's speech of acceptance was almost entirely devoted to a discussion of the silver question. But he could not ignore the charge, which had then become widespread throughout the country, that his party meditated an attack upon the rights of property and was the foe of social order and national honor. He repudiated the idea that his party believed that equality of talents and wealth could be produced by human institutions; he declared his belief in private property as the stimulus to endeavor and compensation for toil; but he took his stand upon the principle that all should be equal before the law. Among his foes he discovered "those who find a pecuniary advantage in advocating the doctrines of non-interference when great aggregations of wealth are trespassing upon the rights of individuals." The government should enforce the laws against all enemies of the public weal, not only the highwayman who robs the unsuspecting traveler, but also the transgressors who "through the more polite and less hazardous means of legislation appropriate to their own use the proceeds of the toil of others."