Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/446

426 rule which at this moment controls the Republican party; and through it the American people. And this rule we are asked to continue.

As for myself, I shall not help in doing it. I cannot help it. I have been a humble and faithful worker in the Republican ranks from the beginning of my public life, and my political associations were dear to my heart. But this perverted organization is not the Republican party which had my allegiance. I came to this country from a foreign land to enjoy the blessings of republican government and to live in the moral pride of a free man. I cannot sacrifice both to a party which has been false to itself. I have always believed that true progress grows out of a free and manly contest of opinions, and I cannot aid in tightening round the American people that network of organized selfishness, that snakish coil of power which is to stifle every free aspiration, and to bind the people down to a will not their own. It is my profound conviction that this network must be broken through, this despotism must be destroyed, the people must be inspired once more with the breath of independent opinion, we must have the emancipation of political conscience, and now is the time to strike for it.

Have you thought of it, how a condition of things, such as now surrounds us, could develop itself? It is not a new story. Every period of great effort and excitement in the life of a nation is followed by one of apathy and indifference. It is then that bad precedents ripen into vicious habits of thought, into tame acquiescence in wrong, into indolent submission to the arrogance of power—in one word, into those dangers to which not seldom free institutions succumb. Such periods test the spirit of a free people, and through such a period we have just been passing. The civil war, with its gigantic efforts and terrible commotions, had put the energies of the