'Che Conservative.
now asking for pensions aggregate more
hundreds of thousands than ever enlisted
in the Union army from 18(51 ( to 1805 in
clusive ought to cause deliberate patriot
ism to investigate and demonstrate the
merit of every pensioner added to the
roll.
roll.Old
Old soldiers who rightfully and honor
ably get pensions should protest against
padding the rolls with the unworthy
and the fraudulent.
Nothing could bettor illustrate the dif
ference between the simulated demo
crats who are chained ( o the vices and
vagaries of populism , and the real , gen
uine , gold-standard democrats than the
difference between oleomargarine and
real cream-evolved butter. The populists
are pinchbeck statesmen , and the alleged
democrats who follow them are oleomar
garine democrats. They are as different
from the full-weight-and-fineness demo
crats of the gold stamp , as tallow and
lard are from genuine Jersey butter.
But oleomargarine , according to Hoi-
comb's administration , is good enough
for invalids who are the wards of the
state ; and oleomargarine democracy is
good enough to furnish votes that secure
all the offices to the populists. The
sick will thrive on bread spread with
oleomargarine just as satisfactorily as
democracy thrives when veneered with
free coinage of silver at sixteen to one ,
and other financial and economic falla
cies. Oleomargarine statesmanship is as
good for the state of Nebraska as an
oleomargarine diet is for the insane and
other wards in the public institutions
of this commonwealth.
Just as the ris-
HAKD UCK.be tide of business -
ness iu a growing
town drives the residences before it , so
that the fashionable houses of a few
years ago are left forlorn amid the noise
of traffic ; while on the other hand the
open fields are taken possession of and
made to bear the homes of the well-to-
do ; so in the shifting of men's ideas
gradual changes are brought about in
the meaning of words. Oiice-respect-
able terms fall into evil ways , so that
they are no longer fit to appear in polite
society , and , conversely , words of ill
repute are brought up into the light and
air- and formally adopted by the wise
and good. Sometimes there are signs of
method in this process , but often it ap
pears to bo governed only by the freak
ish spirit of language.
Who , for instance , can explain why
the good and bad words for boy and girl
have been reversed in position in the last
500 years ? When Wyclift'o translated
the Bible into English , "knave" and
"wench" were the proper words. Ho
made Saint Paul proclaim himself "tho
knave of Jesus Christ , " and told the
story about the ruler of the synagogue
thus : "And ho holding the hond of the
wonche , seith to her , Wencho , to thee I
seie , rise thou. And anon the wenche
rees , and walkido. " Our word girl , on
the other hand , had a rut her unsavory
flavor at that time ; . and the old Teu
tonic word for a lad , or young man , has
been advanced to "knight" in English ,
while , oddly enough , it has been de
graded in German to mean a stable-boy.
It is remarkable how fate has perse
cuted nearly all words applying to the
plain people. A large proportion of our
most unpleasant terms were at one time
perfectly respectable words , and meant
no more than that the bearer was en
gaged in manual labor , or in agricul
ture. They were no doubt started on
the downward path by the idle upper
class , who were displeased with such
people because they wore old clothes
and smelled sweaty. "Vulgar" and
"lewd" are such words ; they come re
spectively from the Latin and German
words for the common people. "Vul
gar" brought its supercilious sneer into
English'with it ; "lewd" has come down
in comparatively recent times. In the
Cook's Tale we read :
"Thur was no lowetlo mini that in the hallu
stood ,
That woldo do Uamulyn eny tiling but good. "
Hero it signifies merely the menservants
vants , or farm-hands. In the King
James' translation of the Bible , the
apostle Paul is made to characterize a
mob that broke up one of his meeting
as "certain lewd fellows of the baser
sort. " Here it is used in a directly dis
paraging way , but it is still far from its
present meaning.
' Common" itself , though it really
applies only to such things as we share
with others , has come to be used in an
uncomplimentary vray.
A "villain" is such a person as a
Roman gentleman came in contact with
when ho visited his villa or country-
house. A "scamp" would seem also to
be one who has relations with the campier
or fields. A "blackguard" is one of the
company that appeared from a rich
man's kitchen when he mustered his
entire household.
It was in much this same spirit that
an Eastern agent , not long ago , being
disappointed as to something he had
hoped to obtain from the Nebraska
City council , sought to wound that re
spectable body by calling its members
"a sot of farmers. " "What does the
man mean ? " asked one of the council-
men. "Ho can't hurt my feelings a bit
by saying that I own a farm in Otoe
county. I'd just as soon own three or
four. "
Sometimes the change in the force
of a word tells a story of development
of society. "Pecuniary" and "fee , "
which both have reference today to
money , began , as everybody knows , as
the Latin and German words respec
tively for cattle. This goes back a long
way. It was by reason of a mistrans
lation of this Latin word , no doubt , and
not because cattle were still the chief
form of portable property , that an old
English Bible speaks of a "womman
which haddo spondid al hir catol 'in to
lechis ; " that is , for the doctors.
Wo speak with equanimity of our
children having the measles ; but that is
tiie old name for no less a disease than
eprosy. "Manye meselis weren in
Israel "says Wycliffo , and again "Crokido
non gen , meselis ben maad clone. " We
have a savor of this in the common
phrase "measly pork , " for meat infected
with trichina.
Silver at sixteen
SWITCHED OFI-\
to one in unlimited
quantities , and without cost of coinage
to the owners of the bullion , is no longer
the slogan of the populists and other dis
turbers of the public credit. The
"white metal" and "the crime of
seventy-three" are not now in evidence
when the orators of fusion pour out the
torrents- their verbosity. But the
McCleary bill , so called , and the pro
posed legislation which is still in the
hands of the congressional committee on
currency and banking are the objects of
their holy indignation and patriotic
wrath. And from the general trend of
the fusion discussions of finance it is
only fair to conclude that from Allen to
Billgreone , the leaders will all finally
land upon the shoals of John Lawism.
They will all favor a paper currency ,
that shall be irredeemable , to be issued
by the government itself. The descent
from a dollar which is forty per coutjiut
to a dollar that is wholly Jiat is facile and
swift. The error of banking by govern
ments is as obvious as experiences and
disasters , which history has recorded ,
can make it.
There is no reason why the govern
ment should furnish the currency for the
American people any more than it
should provide them pork out of a gov
ernment nackintr house or flour out of a
government mill. Banking should be
left to bankers and milling to millers.
The solo and only purpose of the de
partment of the treasury should bo , as
it was intended to be , the faithful col
lection of the revenues of the United
States and their honest and discreet dis
bursement for the liquidation of the ex
penses of the government. The simple
monetary governmental function is the
minting of bullion into discs and certi
fying the fineness and weight of each
coin. No legal-tender quality should bo
given to any kind of currency whether
made of paper or metal. Withoutlegal-
tender the United States may coin silver
and gold in unlimited quantities and the
relation of the supply of silver dollars
to the demand for silver dollars would
fix their value. And the gold dollars
would bo valued by the same inexorable
and forever operating law.
