Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/431

Rh policy is followed with regard to the inquiry in the disappearance of important official documents from the War Department. I venture to say that the report of neither of these two investigations will see the light before the Presidential election. The people must restrain their curiosity, and rest meanwhile in the belief that there is nobody to blame.

And now, what does all this mean? What does it mean that, when the abuses of the Government or the shortcomings of the Administration come into question, systematic whitewashing is cultivated as one of the fine arts, nay, as a party duty? What does it mean that the President can so flagrantly transgress his Constitutional powers as he did when ordering the Navy to protect the ruler of Santo Domingo, by force of arms, against any foreign assailant, and even against his own subjects; that the President may ever so wilfully violate the laws of the land and the commands of public decency; that the officers of the Administration may do things ever so arbitrary and mischievous; that the public service may show ever so many evidences of corruption and abuses ever so gross, and that then independent criticism is silenced with the charge of party treason, and every resource of ingenuity is exhausted on the floor of Congress, as well as by the party press, to justify the wrongs committed, to protect the guilty parties, to conceal the truth and to throw dust into the eyes of the people? What does it mean that you see men of even high public station, who might be presumed to respect themselves, openly, before the people, defend the scandals of Presidential nepotism, and the devotion to high and responsible officers of present-makers, things so disgraceful in a republic that no man with the pride and spirit of an American citizen should be able to mention, and far less to defend, the humiliating fact without feeling the blush