The politicians who worked out the St. Louis platform knew what they were about. They knew that they were creating a hypocritical document with which to deceive and ensnare the American people. They fixed their net and made their haul. They succeeded to this extent--that they elected their ticket and gained possession of the government. Lo, the day of judgment has already come! Now, in the endeavor to postpone the judgment, they prepare arguments under captions that have a friendly sound but are at bottom bitterer than cassia and more mockful than the laughter of Mephistopheles. The next stage in the policy of these gentlemen is to invent something that shall _seem_ to be bimetallism, but is not. This something they seek to palm off on the world and to distract mankind with it until the money sharks who are chuckling behind the gold-vaults of two continents shall be enabled, in the confusion and _mêlée_, to shuffle off to covert with their incalculable loads of booty. Mr. Lepper's paper is a document of the kind described. The general purport of it is this: "People of the United States, I am a physician. I belong to the silver school. I am a graduate of the Bimetallic Institute. This pill which I give you is out of the silver pharmacopoeia. It will heal all your diseases perfectly." But when you examine the pill which he exhibits, you will find it to be a solid bolus of gold, filmed over with tin foil. Mr. Lepper enters upon the discussion of the subject with the following statement: "The vast stores of silver purchased by the United States under the laws of 1878 and 1890 are a dead asset of the Treasury, and cannot be utilized for purposes of redemption until sixteen ounces of silver shall again be equivalent to one of gold." Observe what becomes of these propositions under a truthful analysis. In the first place, our "vast stores of silver" are _not_ vast stores. They are not nearly as vast as they ought to be. There are no bursting vaults of silver in the Treasury of the United States and never were. In the next place the stores of silver are _not_ a dead asset of the Treasury. They are just as much a living asset of the Treasury as is the accumulation of gold therein--and in the same sense. These stores cannot be used for purposes of redemption because _they do not exist for that purpose_. A bimetallist who is not a bimetallist is always strong on redemption; and he knows only one redeemer--gold. The redeeming business in our financial plan of salvation has been altogether overdone. In the name of wonder, what is it we want to redeem? Is it the greenbacks? Is it _any_ of our legal tender? The greenback is already constitutional money. Does Mr. Lepper know that the greenback has been declared constitutional money by the Supreme Court of the United States--this with only a single dissenting vote? Does he know that every national bank bill in the United States is finally redeemable in greenbacks? Does he know that in