Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/489

Rh representative character of our institutions that is at stake; for when it is known that seats in this body can be bought and held by right of purchase, sellers and purchasers will multiply in the same measure as the wealth of this country grows to be plundered, as the interests vary to be subserved, as the rapacity of greed increases to be glutted, and the day will come when this body will represent the blood-suckers and the oppressors of the people, and no longer the people themselves.

Sir, it is at last time that we should look the dangers which threaten this Republic in the face. This Republic has no monarchical traditions; it has no pretenders of historic right to disturb its repose or to plot its overthrow. It is not likely to succumb to the shock of force. But there have been republics before this just as sound and healthy in their original constitution as ours, but which have died from the slower but no less fatal disease of corruption and demoralization, and of that decay of constitutional principles and that anarchy of power which always accompany corruption and demoralization. It is time for us to keep in mind that it takes more to make and to preserve a republic than the mere absence of a king, and that when a republic decays, its soul is apt to die first, while the outward form is still lasting to beguile and deceive the eyes of the unthinking. I hope and trust that we are still far from that point; but I think no candid observer will deny that there have been symptoms of a movement in that direction; and I say it with gladness, there are also symptoms justifying the hope that the downward movement may soon be checked if the checking has not already commenced.

I ask you, what is our office under such circumstances? This is the Senate of the United States. No parliamentary body in the world, not even the House of Lords of Great Britain, possesses such exalted attributes, enjoys