Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/553

Rh that applause came from the same people whom weak-kneed politicians had represented to me as all on fire for repudiation. And the same politicians have to thank their fate if their people have consented to forget the abandonment of honest principles they were guilty of.

Ah, sir, those miscalculate their chances who think they can safely speculate upon the rascally instincts of the American people.

The inflation cry will go the same way the repudiation cry has gone. I am convinced the inflation cry will be one of the most short-lived cries this country ever heard; and I am not much mistaken when I say that those who advocate inflation in this body must make hot haste to commit the Senate to that iniquitous doctrine, or the last semblance of popular support will drop away before the decision is reached. No, sir, it is not the people, it is the speculators and their deluded victims, who are continually dinning the cry of inflation into our ears, and so it will become manifest to every one who has eyes to see and ears to hear.

It has frequently been asserted that every native-born American citizen is apt to think of becoming at some time or other a candidate for the Presidency. Permit me to say that if any possible Presidential candidate indulges in the delusion that he can ride into the White House on the inflation cry, he will meet with the same disappointment that overtook those who seven or eight years ago thought the repudiation cry a good thing for the same purpose. If public men who advocate the inflation policy should, unfortunately for themselves and for the country, prevail in this Congress, they will live to curse the day when they achieved that fatal success. Let them not indulge in the delusion that they will secure the favor of the people by a short spell of deceptive prosperity, for I tell them the bubble may just have time to burst before the year 1876.