Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/76

42 cannot but be a matter of deep regret to every true friend of the anti-slavery cause. A political party, which professes devotion to the rights of man in the abstract, and violates them in practice, will seldom possess and can never preserve the confidence of the people. I do not understand the logic of those who consider the right to vote a less inalienable right than the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” That right is as essential to the exercise of self-government, as self-government is essential to the enjoyment of liberty. A repudiation of this doctrine would upset the whole theory on which the Republican party rests. The naturalization laws have set certain restrictions to the right of suffrage which were necessary in order to regulate its exercise. But to invent new restrictions beyond the limits of that necessity is certainly incompatible with the principles of those who adopt the Declaration of Independence as the basis of their political creed. There may have been abuses, but it is a ruinous policy to disregard fundamental principles when pressing abuses are to be corrected.

This is deeply felt by all those members of the Republican party who are directly concerned in it. The foreign-born Republicans were drawn to that party by the irresistible force of principle and nothing else. No wing of the party has worked more faithfully and disinterestedly. They did not aspire to position and preferment; but the only thing desired was to see the principles they loved faithfully carried out in practice. The friends of freedom could always count upon them as their truest confederates. They joined the Republican party in spite of the cry of Know-Nothingism, placing their trust in the power of principle over the souls of men and in the good faith of their political friends. Their labors did not remain unrewarded. Republicanism spread among the German population of the Northern States