Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/451

Rh entirely at its mercy? Do you expect to infuse a better spirit into our political life, when you teach your politicians and public men that the safest thing they can do for their own success is to become the tools of such party managers as now rule us? I appeal to your sober judgment. If you honestly want reform, this is the first thing needful; you must break the subjugation of individual conscience in politics; you must make elbow room for independent criticism and a free contest of opinions; you must put down that partisanship which knows none but selfish ends and tends to make men mere parts of a machine; you must promote, with all the means in your power, the unsettling and disintegration of the old party organizations now existing, and no man of impartial judgment will deny that in this respect the success of the Cincinnati movement will prove a powerful dissolvent.

And now, I repeat, suppose Mr. Greeley were dishonest enough to break his pledges and to try on his part to continue the practices now prevailing—have you considered what situation he would be in? Could President Grant have safely indulged in his performances, but for the ever faithful, obedient and well-drilled party organization at his back, in and out of Congress, a party organization every member of which was whipped into the belief that every misdeed of the Administration must be concealed, or whitewashed, or defended, for the sake of preserving party ascendancy? But for this, General Grant would soon have become aware that the Presidency means business, and not pleasure; the just criticism of the opposition would have ground him to powder before the second year of his Administration; and as he is so sensible of his own interests, he would soon have found it to his interest to mend his ways. Even General Babcock would have told him to be careful.

And where is the ever faithful party organization in