Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/297

Rh see personal government, or arbitrary, irresponsible power established on the ruins of free institutions, the fault lies hardly ever in the fundamental law, but in the unscrupulousness of those in power, in the cowardice and venality of politicians, and in the careless levity of the masses who are too indifferent to the value of what they possess to exercise that vigilance which is the price of liberty. No, the Constitution as it is to-day contains more guarantees and safeguards of human freedom and rights than any constitution ever devised by human wisdom. If under it the American people lose a particle of their liberties they will have themselves to blame.

Many of you will point to the Ku-Klux law as a dangerous stretch of the powers of the Central Government, and the offspring of the new Constitutional amendments. I myself call that law a dangerous stretch of the central power. I most earnestly spoke against it as such; and having spoken and voted against it in the Senate, I am now free to say that I do not consider it the offspring of the new Constitutional amendments; for I believe a similar law would have been passed under the same circumstances, and a sufficient pretext of power would have been screwed out of the Constitution, even without these amendments. This being a matter of special interest to the South, I will explain myself more fully. Let me tell you, and I wish you to consider it well, that the mere cry for Constitutional government is not sufficient to arrest the tendency you see embodied in the Ku-Klux act. That law was enacted to stop the acts of violence and persecution inflicted by a certain class of the Southern population upon Republicans and colored people, and in order to bring the perpetrators of those acts to the punishment they deserve. That in many localities such acts have been perpetrated, not, perhaps, to so fearful an extent as is asserted by interested parties, but still in considerable number, no well-informed