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changing a gold-based currency to a silver-based one, believing it would benefit the working man. I don’t understand the economic principles behind the speech and probably it was hogwash, but if so, hogwash was rarely more dazzling. Known as his ‘Cross of Gold’ speech, the most noted line of it is, ‘You shall not press down upon the brow of labour this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.’ His talent—to mix the language of progressive politics with that of old-time religion—
was a great talent and in the early days he used it well. Listen to his defence of the working man in the ‘Cross of Gold’ as he talks to the gold delegates:
    ‘When you come before us and tell us that we are about to disturb your business interests, we reply that you have disturbed our business interests by your course.
    ‘We say to you that you have made the definition of a business man too limited in its application. The man who is employed for wages is as much a business man as his employer … the merchant at the crossroads store is as much a business man as the merchants of New York; the farmer who goes forth in the morning and toils all day—who begins in the spring and toils all summer—and who by the application of brain and muscle to the natural resources of the country creates wealth, is as much a business man as the man who goes upon the board of trade and bets upon the price of grain; the miners who go down a thousand feet into the earth, or climb two thousand feet upon the cliffs, and bring forth from their hiding places the precious metals to be poured into the channels of trade are as much business men as the few financial magnates who, in a back room, corner the money of the world.’
    At the age of thirty-six he was nominated Democratic Presidential Candidate. He got 47 per cent of the vote and won in more states than his opponent. Voter fraud, however, stole six states from him and he lost this election and then two more.
    In his thirty years in politics, he fought for minority rights, women’s suffrage, workmen’s compensation, the minimum wage, the eight-hour workday, and the expansion of education. The first presidential candidate to promote himself using movies with sound (in his 1908 campaign), he was incredibly popular and drew vast crowds wherever he went. He could be funny too. Once, when he was about to give a speech in a rural area, he realised he was standing on the back of a manure spreader and remarked, ‘This is the first time I have ever spoken from a Republican platform.’
    But only those who have mainlined the powerful narcotic of
applause can know its transcendently addictive and corrupting effect. To keep it flowing into the ego’s main vein, a great actor becomes a ham and an orator of conviction becomes a pompous windbag. Nor can one calculate the effects on an already religious man of the seemingly unjust defeats which Bryan suffered when he ran for President. And as battered wives and hostages will often feel gratitude to their persecutors for at least not killing them, so believers will suffer the most outrageous and undeserved bashings from God (including, in Bryan’s case, diabetes) and in some weird paradoxical way find in them increased evidence of His goodness.
    So, if you read Bryan’s speeches you see that as time goes by the political conviction and humane passion start to be subsumed by tedious religious dogma. He becomes a rampant Prohibitionist. The preacher overwhelms the reformer. Now what you get are the leaden, inane pronouncements of the typical Christian. In his 1904 speech, ‘The Prince of Peace,’ he tells us ‘The mind is greater than the body and the soul is greater than the mind,’ and ‘A belief in immortality not only consoles the individual, but it exerts a powerful influence on bringing peace between individuals.’ (How come I never heard of an atheist kamikaze pilot and how easy a sell would Jihad be without the promise of