Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/82

62 Thus it appears that at this moment the necessary inspiration is wanting for the formation of a new party. And yet the preliminary fermentation is evidently working in both the existing organizations. I confidently assert that a considerable element in the Democratic organization are dissatisfied with their party, but stay in it because they like the Republican party still less. And a considerable element in the Republican organization are dissatisfied with their party, but stay in it because they like the Democratic party less. I know this assertion will be vociferously denied by zealous partisans on both sides; but such is the result of my observations, and I believe it to be correct. Both parties have lost much of that positive moral power which is necessary to sway the popular mind.

That under such circumstances the discipline of either party should prove insufficient to prevent irregular movements, splits and breaks and schisms, is by no means surprising. You witness such things not in Missouri only; you observe them wherever you turn your eyes. They do not spring from the wiles and intrigues of “political Catilines,” as an indignant party organ expressed itself. They are not the cause but the result, the natural outgrowth of the situation. They are elementary upheavings; and if you try to repress them by a violent enforcement of party discipline you will only provoke more violent and formidable explosions. And now, while the prospect of a new line of division may to-day appear rather dim, yet I repeat something of the kind will come with the necessity of a natural process. It may not come for some time, and yet it may come all at once, over night, as a political question strikes and sets on fire the popular mind; a question, perhaps, existing to-day, but thrust into prominence by a sudden event which we do not think of at present.