Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/161

Rh and defalcations. You understand now perfectly well that when the whisky tax was fixed at two dollars, it was absolutely impossible to enforce the law with the machinery of the public service we had. You are no longer surprised at the frequency of mail robberies which are perpetrated in post-offices. You see the smugglers in our ports lying in wait to watch their opportunity when, taking advantage of the inexperience of new officers, or with the aid of dishonest ones, they can rush whole cargoes into the ports of the United States. It is no longer surprising to you henceforth when you read in the reports of the Committee on Retrenchment that from this source losses have occurred for many years amounting to from twelve to twenty-five million dollars annually at the port of New York alone. Nor is it surprising to you to learn, as is calculated by gentlemen of experience in that institution, that each change of a collector in the customhouse at New York costs the country an average of ten million dollars, in consequence of the confusion and disorder which necessarily follow.

Neither will it be surprising to you to learn, as an illustration of the effect of the system on the administration of justice, what I learned from a United States Judge this very morning, that in his district there had been three changes in the district attorney ship within two years, and that three late district attorneys appeared in the courts as attorneys for the same defendants whom they had commenced to prosecute when in office, now defending them with all the secrets of the Government in their possession, and that in all probability from this source there will be a loss arising to the Government of more than four hundred thousand dollars. No, sir; there is nothing astonishing in all this, for you have learned that the offices of the Government are mere “spoils,” “public plunder;” that instead of being regarded as the places of