State Convention—Dollars and Sense. 
251 
on the millionaire broad-gauge—personal cunning, with audacity, 
and legal aids with pecuniary compliments placed u where they 
will do the most good.” This criticism must be applied only to 
the side of the picture we have under observation, and not to that 
legitimate accumulation of wealth which justice approves. 
The skilled fisherman always desires to manipulate his own net. 
His scienced eye points out the course, direction, and value of the 
school of mullets and gudgeons which he seeks to capture, and his 
practiced art enables him to pull in here—to let out there—to haul 
taut a line just at the opportune moment, or to loosen a cord when 
and where it is likely to do most good, and thus, by his ability to 
expand, while the gudgeons and suckers are being schooled, and to 
contract when numbers and position are most favorable, he is al¬ 
most always sure of a large haul ! 
Now, this is precisely the sort of skill required by the successful 
dollar-fisher, alias the bullionist, who, with ceaseless observations, 
watches the financial pool to cast in the bait of expansion, until 
the hungry gudgeons congregate in large schools to nibble the 
tempting morsel, while, unobserved, the dollar-fisher has his “pals ” 
engaged in setting the net, so as to cut off all retreat, and at the 
opportune moment, the long cords of contraction are pulled taut; 
the circling rows of buoys, or middle-men, alias brokers, are seen 
bobbing on the surface, and in due time the dollar-fisher, having 
secured his prey beyond a possibility of escape, hauls ashore his 
victims, denudes them of every particle of blubber or other valu¬ 
ables, and leaves them to rot on the ill-omened shore of adversitv. 
But, to drop metaphor, let us come down to the bed-rock of plain 
facts, such as our eyes hath seen, and our moral senses have de¬ 
plored. 
For the last Centennial decade we have, as a nation, been talking 
about a specie currency, which none of us, nor our forefathers, have 
ever seen, nor have we dreamed of it in the fulfillment of our 
prophesies. We have said much, and done a great deal for a “ specie 
basis.” We have had it, too, in all its wild-cat and tame-cat 
glory, with its personal security, its real-estate security, its sand¬ 
bank security, and its State-stock security—safety-fund, red-dog 
and skim-milk s 3 r stems, and after submitting to losses by the mil¬ 
lions, under each and ever} r system, we may go back in exultant 
pride to the halcyon era, from 1848 to 1860, when under a glorious 
