Page:Addresses in Memory of Carl Schurz.pdf/27

 they landed in New York. He immediately began to read newspapers and novels, historical and political essays, and Blackstone's Commentaries, using the dictionary incessantly, but making little use of an English grammar. He also followed a method strikingly like that which Benjamin Franklin devised for acquiring a thorough knowledge of a language—even of the mother tongue. He translated many of the Letters of Junius into German and back again into English, and compared this retranslation with the English original. He wrote diligently in English, always reading over and revising what he had written. In less than six months he could talk easily in English and write a good letter. This achievement was the more remarkable because he and his wife associated chiefly with recently immigrated Germans. He was also studying industriously the political history and institutions of the country and its social conditions. His contemporary observations on American conditions of life show remarkable insight and sagacity. He saw clearly that political freedom means freedom to be feeble, foolish, and sinful in public affairs, as well as freedom to be strong, wise, and good. He saw that the object of political freedom is to develop character in millions of free men through the suffering which follows mistakes and crimes, and through the satisfaction and improvement which follows on public wisdom and righteousness. He saw clearly the productiveness of freedom through the spontaneous coöperation of private citizens. He saw how freedom to do something awakens the desire and develops the capacity to do it. In short, this sanguine young foreigner, who had no experience whatever of democracy at work, saw clearly that a republic is not an ideal state, but a state in which good contends with evil, and the people themselves, and not a few masters of the people do the fighting, and so get instruction both from defeats through folly and vice and from victories through good sense and virtue. He saw that the actual political, industrial, and social conditions in a republic might, like the actual issue of a single individual's struggles, often be far below ideal conditions, and yet freedom to do wrong or to do right would remain the best possible atmosphere, indeed