People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 October 1894 — TRY THE EXPERIMENT. [ARTICLE]

TRY THE EXPERIMENT.

We Should Take the Lead in Adopting Bimetallism and Let Other Countries Follow. The democrats of Tennessee, in convention assembled, have declared that this government shall establish the parity “without reference to other nations.” In language as plain as the vocabulary can provide, such is their expression. Mr. Cleveland has said we cannot establish the parity unless we consult other nations. The Tennessee democrats say it is their opinion it can be done. They are willing to try. They are willing to make the experiment of the free, unlimited and independent coinage of silver “without reference to other nations.” As Mr. Cleveland prefers to experiment as so the parity with the co-operation of other nations, the Tennessee democrats are willing that the experiment shall be made with the United States government taking the initiative. The latter takes the patriotic course. More than a century ago King George said that the American colonies could not stand alone; that they should pay taxes without representation because it was of great advantage to the colonial children that they should be attached to the apron strings of their mother. But though the American country embraced less than 5,000,000 of people; though it was threatened by savages; though it had neither money nor munitions of war, it had Benjamin Franklin and John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry, and a country road engineer named George Washington. According to all historical precedent, they could not establish an independent government. But somehow or other they managed to do so. They set up a new kind of government, utterly at variance with the accepted notions of government, and it seems to have been something of a success. They declared that they would be independent—poor fools they were —and lo! they became independent. They defied all the traditions and the mathematicians and European financiers, but they managed to raise the money,equip their army and fight the war to a successful issue. It just happened that these Franklins, Hancocks, Jeffersons, Henrys and Washingtons were men of that sort who, having determind to be free and independent, were devoted enough to themselves and their country to make themselves free and independent. They were warned they could not do it. It was proved to them beyond all controversy that nobody in England or France or Greece or China had ever achieved anything like they proposed. But they went right along and laid the foundations of a republic in which the citizen is the sovereign, and to-day the president of the United States is quite

as formidable a character as the queea of England, the king of Italy or the czar of Russia. Our friends should be willing to let us make the experiment of testing the soundness or the fallacy of the theory that this country may be made “free and independent" of European financiers. Let us see if we can make history repeat itself. We can repent of our error in time, if we discover ourselves in error. But let us once again try John Hancock’s and George Washington's way. Memphis Commercial Appeal.