But the people said, November 8, 1892, it matters not whether the currency be debased or not. We, the plain “Common People,” will not be debased into social inferiority! It matters not whether there be thousands of counterfeits in the currency of the community. We would rather have counterfeited currency than counterfeited aristocracy! The dollar to-day, guaranteed by the faith of the Federal Government, may be worth a hundred cents, and we’ll make it worth only fifty cents, as guaranteed by each State in the Union, but the position, socially and otherwise, of each man and citizen of the Union must be worth a _hundred cents_. And we are weary at the attempt made by sham aristocrats to depreciate the value of that doctrine, which is dearer to the American than dollars and cents--the EQUALITY OF MAN. With regard to the Force Bill, the Republican party had the best of the argument. Their platform, as adopted in Minneapolis, only indorsed the idea of a fair, free, and honest election, all of which was but the reiteration of part of that Rock of Ages for the patriotic American--the Constitution of the United States. Can any man argue that, as a good citizen of the Union, it is proper for him to believe in anything other than a fair, honest election? If there be such, he is not to be found in the ranks of the plain, common, honest people, who absolutely abhor any fraud upon their franchise as citizens of the United States. So that, in point of fact, apparently the three great issues to be decided in the last campaign by the American people were: Protection _versus_ Tariff; National Banks _versus_ State Banks; Fair Elections _versus_ Frauds on the Franchise. Without a moment’s hesitation, the American people would have decided that the Republican party should continue in control of the affairs of the nation, especially when that Republican party had for its standard-bearer a man who, like Benjamin Harrison, possessed the confidence of the American people--a man in whom the American people recognized every patriotic principle inherent in the breasts of the common, plain people of America. But the Republican party of 1892 had become lost in the mist arising from the exhalations from the manure heap of sham aristocracy and “caste.” Figures looming out of the gloom of the present, hardly compare favorably with those giants who cultivated the soil in which was planted the Republican oak tree. Through the miasma arising from the rotting present of the Republican party, the picture of Thomas Platt appears. In the pellucid atmosphere of the Republican party of the past, we see the picture of Seward. Amidst the odoriferous present we find the likeness of the skillful, the Honorable Matthew S. Quay. Upon the clear sky of the past is mirrored the majestic Roscoe Conkling.