People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 April 1895 — Losing Their Temper. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Losing Their Temper.

The Chicago Inter-Ocean of April sth copies the following without comment from the Memphis Commercial-Appeal:

•‘The Chattanooga Times, like a good many other monometallist newspapers, has lost its temper because of the wide circulation of a little book entitled “Coin's Financial School,” which it describes as “sorry twaddle," and wrathfully declars that “if it could be safely done, such books ought to be burned by the hangman and the‘authors stood in the stocks. ” We fear, however, that it caunot be “safely done." Revolutions never go backward. The people, the plain people', the ignorant plebs., the uncouth hoi polloi, have enjoyed their liberty so long that any attempt to proscribe their literature and regulate their opinions by the civilized and intellectual processes of “standing them in the stocks” might be resented. That “manyheaded beast” called the people is a dangerous animal in his moods. The learned editor of the Times doubtless knows something of his nature and habits, and wisely suggests a doubt as to whether it, would be safe to cage him after he has been allowed to run wild so long. This thing of burning literature by the hangman and standing heretical authors in the stocks was a practice much in vogue some centuries ago; the learned editor of the Times knows as well as any man just how efficacious such measures proved in checking the spread of “heresy.” There is always some Luther bold enough to nail a script even upon the door of the church. The literature of the common people is read by the light of the flames kindled for its destruction, and liberty is never more effectively preached than from the stocks, the scaffold, or the stake. Even if the Times could bring back the good old days and the good old ways theywouldnot avail. No “hangman.” not even he of Buffalo, can strangle the freedom of speech, and no fire can consume the spirit of liberty. Let the venerable editor of the Times therefore cease to sigh for what he can never get, and what would do him and his orthodox creed no good if he could get it. We assure him that the putting of financial heretics in the stocks could not be “safely done.” The people have a prejudice against that sort of thing. The common hangman will never be a popular schoolmaster in this age and country.”