Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/279

Rh of unconstitutional assumptions of power, and alarming acts of usurpation have taken place. We ought to return without delay to the sound practices of Constitutional government, and local self-government ought to be restored to that freedom which belongs to it under our Constitutional system, and which it needs to develop all its blessings.

Great abuses have grown up in our civil service. The system of government patronage has scandalously demoralized our political life, and most injurious examples are given by selfish partisans in high places. The civil service ought to be reformed, the abuses of the patronage abolished, and all good citizens should coöperate to restore our public life to the purity and high tone of the first years of the Republic. Shameless corruption, open and covert, has developed itself in many places. There ought to be a general house-cleaning, to knock off the dust and to extinguish the vermin.

Our system of duties on imports is such as to favor some material interests enormously at the expense of others, and to enrich the few by oppressing the many. It ought to be so adjusted as to benefit the National treasury only, instead of privileged individuals and corporations.

The people are onerously taxed to promote the payment of the National debt with unnecessary rapidity; the taxes ought to be reduced as much as will be consistent with a conscientious discharge of our liabilities, so as to give the business interests of the country time to recuperate and to overcome the exhaustion and losses caused by the war.

The business interests of the country are suffering under the uncertain and fitful fluctuations of values caused by an irredeemable currency. We ought to return as speedily as possible to specie payments, in order to obtain a fixed measure of values and to gain a secure basis for our National credit.