Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/488

468 arrived at the same conclusions that have grown up in my mind, to vote as I shall vote; but to those who have formed the same convictions let me say, there is something higher at stake here than the fate of one individual, whom we might regard with sympathy and compassion; something higher also than the danger that might possibly grow from an abuse of power by the majority in vacating seats or annulling elections; and that something is the purity, nay, the very existence of the representative character of our institutions. You speak of partisan recklessness that might unscrupulously employ such a power for its own selfish ends. I know that danger as well as any one knows it; I fear it just as much as any one; I am certainly not inclined to underestimate it; but I entreat you to consider that, by assuring impunity to such offenses as we are here dealing with, by securing the full fruits of their iniquity to those who purchase seats in this body, you will invite to the Senate of the United States an element which, in its very nature corrupt, will be the readiest, the most servile, the most dangerous tool in the hands of reckless partisanship. For you must know that those who feel themselves most vulnerable, those who have to shun the searching light of inquiry, will never have that courage of independence which defies attack, but are apt to be the first to earn, by the most abject and slavish service, refuge and security under the protecting wing of a powerful party. Secure the exclusion from our legislative halls of that class of men who, accustomed to the use of ignoble means, must, in the very nature of things, serve ignoble ends, and you will have secured a much better safeguard against the transgressions of a reckless partisan spirit than by confiding our power within narrower limits than those by which the Constitution has circumscribed it.

I repeat, it is the purity, it is the very existence of the