In his opinion, the Democratic income tax was not based upon hostility to the rich, but was simply designed to apportion the burdens of government more equitably among those who enjoyed its protection. As to the matter of the Supreme Court, there was no suggestion in the platform of a dispute with that tribunal. For a hundred years the Court had upheld the underlying principle of the income tax, and twenty years before "this same Court sustained without a dissenting voice an income tax law almost identical with the one recently overthrown." The platform did not propose an attack on the Supreme Court; some future Court had as much right "to return to the judicial precedents of a century as the present Court had to depart from them. When Courts allow rehearings they admit that error is possible; the late decision against the income tax was rendered by a majority of one after a rehearing."
Discussing the monetary question, Mr. Bryan confined his argument to a few principles which he deemed fundamental. He disposed of international bimetallism by questioning the good faith of those who advocated it and declaring that there was an impassable gulf between a universal gold standard and bimetallism, whether independent or international. He rejected the proposition that any metal represented an absolutely just standard of value, but he argued that bimetallism was better than monometallism because it made a nearer approach to stability, honesty, and justice than a gold standard possibly could. Any legislation lessening the stock of standard money increased the purchasing power of money and lowered the monetary value of all other forms of property. He endeavored to show the advantages to be derived from bimetallism by farmers, wage earners, and the professional classes, and asked whether the mass of the people did not have the right to use the ballot to protect themselves from the disastrous consequences of a rising standard, particularly in view of the fact that the relatively few whose wealth consisted largely in fixed investments had not hesitated to use the ballot to enhance the value of their investments.
On the question of the ratio, sixteen to one, Mr. Bryan declared that, because gold and silver were limited in the quantities then in hand and in annual production, legislation could fix the ratio between them, simply following the law of supply and demand. The charge of repudiation he met with an argument in kind, declaring it to come "with poor grace from those who are seeking to add to the weight of existing debts by legislation which makes money dearer, and who conceal their designs against the general welfare under the euphonious pretense that they are upholding public credit and national honor." He concluded with a warning to his hearers that they could not afford to join the money changers in supporting a financial policy which destroyed the purchasing power of the product of toil and ended with discouraging the creation of wealth.