Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/444

424 a good appointment to a bad one, other things being equal. He undoubtedly desires that affairs should go well, his own welfare included. The cry for civil service reform growing popular, he came very near being a civil service reformer. He started probably with good intentions, and would perhaps have carried them out had he not found it to be his interest to control the political machine in the old way for his reëlection. Then the absolute command of the civil service machinery appeared to him much more useful than civil service reform. He would probably have consented to let the Ku-Klux law drop by its own limitation, but considering his interest in the pending campaign he did not blush to urge his friends in Congress to continue in his hands the most alarming power to suspend the writ of habeas corpus while his own reëlection is pending. He does not mean to be a despot, but he wants to have his will.

Such is the character of his personal government. We should be doing it too much honor by calling it Cæsarism. It is not inspired by any grand, lofty and long-headed ambition, by the insatiable desire of genius to do brilliant deeds and to fill the world with the splendor of a great name, like that of Julius Cæsar and Napoleon. It is absolutely barren of ideas and originality, bare of striking achievements, void of noble sentiments and inspiring example. It is simply dull and heavy, stupid and stubborn in its selfishness. Those who submitted to the rule of Cæsar and Napoleon could say, at least, that they were bowing their heads before the magnificence of towering intellect and wonderful activity, but here there is nothing to warm the heart or to seduce the imagination, and still less, to lift up our moral nature; and the vilest sycophant of President Grant cannot give as an excuse for his abasement, that he finds in his personal government anything to admire. We see nothing