Not a member gave his true reasons for the votes he cast; he gave what he wanted the world to think were his reasons.

Finance was on the carpet in that hour, and bimetallism and monometallism, silver versus gold, were in everyone's mouth.

Richard saw that the goldbugs hailed from money--lending constituencies, while the silverbugs were invariably from either money-borrowing constituencies or constituencies that had silver to sell.

And every man legislated for his district and never for the country; which Richard regarded as an extremely narrow course.

Every man talked of the people's interest; every man was thinking of his own interest and striving only to locate the butter on his political bread.
There was a third class, made up of those who were neither goldbugs nor silverbugs; they were straddlebugs, and, like the two sides of the shield, would be gold when looked at by one contingent and silver when viewed by the other.