mply bimetallism. A popular system of bimetallism is
simply bimetallism--neither more nor less. In this vital matter, the
popularity will take care of itself, and so will the soundness.

In the next place, we observe that if the McKinley administration
depends upon the adoption by it of _any_ system of bimetallism, then the
administration is doomed, deeply and darkly doomed, already. Let the
world know that the McKinley administration will not provide, and has
never intended to provide, the country with _any_ kind of bimetallism.
The administration has no notion of such a thing. It was not created for
such a useful and honorable destiny. It was created to prevent
bimetallism by treacherously pretending to be in favor of it. They who
created the administration, they who determine and will continue to
determine its action, openly sneer at any system of money except the
gold-based system of monometallism.

Mr. Lepper must be aware of this fact. Indeed it is to be hoped that
there is not any longer _one man_ in the United States so far gone down
the slopes of delusion and idiotic infatuation as to imagine that the
hollow pretensions of this administration in the direction of
bimetallism by international agreement, or by any other method, have
ever been anything else than cunning subterfuge and treachery.

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 _melee_, 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