But how are we going to get free money? Why, in the very easiest way possible. It is the simplest problem of them all. I am not going into this discussion to prove to you that gold is not money, since everybody ought to know that it has no more the properties of money than cotton, corn and pork have the properties of money. Now, money is that thing which, if every dollar in circulation should be destroyed, there would be no loss of wealth. Gold, cotton, corn and wheat are wealth. Destroy these and there is a loss. But when money is destroyed, there is no more loss than when a promissory note is destroyed. A note is an evidence of debt. It is not wealth, but its representative. So also is money not wealth, but its representative. And if we had a thousand million dollars in circulation to-day, there would be no more wealth in the country than there now is, and we would have quite as much wealth if there were two thousand millions dollars, since money and wealth are two entirely distinct things. But they tell us that unless money is made redeemable in gold, it is not of any account, and that, too, in the face of our miserable greenback system, which was so much better even than gold that it saved the nation when, had we stuck to gold, we should have been destroyed. Oh, but it was a depreciated currency, says some one. Yes, it was a depreciated currency, and we should have ample reason to be thankful if when we come to pay our bonds, we have a depreciated currency with which to liquidate them, instead of being obliged, as we shall, to pay a thousand dollars in cotton for what we realized less than five hundred in gold. It is not the gold only of a country that constitutes its wealth. What should we care if we had not a single ounce of gold, if we had a thousand million bales of cotton, ten thousand millions bushels of corn and wheat, and a billion dollars’ worth of manufactured goods to send to other countries? So you see it is not the gold after all that makes a circulation good, but the sum total of all kinds of wealth. Now, that is what we propose to substitute for gold as the basis for a money issue. And instead of permitting corporations to issue it and remain at liberty to dispose of their property and let the people who hold their circulation whistle for its redemption, we propose that government, which can neither sell our property nor abscond with it, shall issue it for the people and lend it to them at cost; or if you will insist on paying interest for money, why, then, pay it to the government and lessen your taxes that much, instead of paying interest to bankers and supporting government besides.