Politics & Power Quote by Richard Parks Bland

A threat dressed as patriotism, Bland’s line isn’t trying to persuade so much as to draw a border: you’re either with “Americans,” or you’re a traitor’s accomplice for “England or of Europe.” The repetition - “I do not intend, we do not intend” - performs democratic muscle. It turns a personal vow into a collective mandate, as if dissent has already been outvoted. Then comes the deliberately sticky phrase “confiscating hand,” which makes taxation and debt policy feel like a mugging rather than governance. It’s politics as moral self-defense: if the state takes from you, it’s not policy, it’s theft.

The real work happens in the villain casting. “Any party” is a warning to opponents and a message to wavering allies: this is existential. Bland isn’t merely arguing about rates or currency mechanics; he’s framing economic debate as national survival. The foreign foil - “England or of Europe” - taps an old American suspicion that finance is just empire by other means. In the late 19th century, fights over gold, silver, tariffs, and bondholders were also fights over who the republic served: farmers and workers or creditors and international capital. Bland, a leading “free silver” Democrat, regularly attacked what he saw as Eastern, banker-friendly policy aligned with British financial interests.

Subtext: if you’re for “sound money” and austerity, you’re not just wrong - you’re serving foreigners. It’s a neat, combustible formula: convert class conflict into national loyalty, and make opponents politically illegitimate.