Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/445

Rh but a man who wants to possess, exercise and hold power for his own convenience, and submission to whose rule means loss of self-respect.

And yet, such as it is, this personal government has succeeded in so throwing its coils round the ruling party that the latter can neither breathe nor move except by permission. It has so completely subjugated the will and conscience of that party, that in it criticism has become dumb; that respect for the Constitution and laws, that love of truth, right and justice, that honest zeal for the public welfare and even the pride of manhood are paralyzed by the one supreme object to preserve partisan power in the power of one man. Ask those who in that party honestly strove to arrest the current of usurpation and corruption, and they will tell you that they found themselves running against a combination of despotism and submission as against a wall, deaf to the appeals of reason and inaccessible to shame. As one of them I have stood on the floor of Congress myself, and I know whereof I speak. I have stood there, startled at the stolid cynicism with which, to shield those in power, the most evident facts were denied, the most obvious conclusions rejected, the light of truth itself turned into darkness. I have stood there amazed at that cowardly courage, born of desperate causes, with which, to justify the abuses and misdeeds of the Government, principles were set up and doctrines advanced such as would make every friend of popular freedom grow pale and the Fathers of the Republic turn in their graves. I have stood there overwhelmed with shame and sadness at the very degradation of manhood I saw before me. I have stood there bowed down by the conviction that under the pressure of such influences the struggle for good government must be come a vain folly, and that we shall soon have to fight for the very existence of republican institutions. Such is the