Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/84

64 memories answer much longer. The Republican masses are indeed proud of their past achievements, as they have a right to be. But they do not desire their party to quarter itself, like an idle and hungry pensioner, upon the public crib on account of great services rendered some time ago. They know that the war is over, and they are glad of it. They do not want to beat the war-drum longer than it is called for.

Still less do I think that a stroke of sensation, such as a foreign difficulty, gotten up for the purpose of preserving the party in a blaze of artificial excitement, can answer the object. Far from going into a trap of that kind, the intelligent and patriotic masses would indignantly repel such a trick as an atrocity worthy of a Louis Napoleon, but not of a republican people governing themselves.

Neither do I believe that the Republican party can live if it makes itself the representative, advocate and agent of any special economic interest. Such a policy would certainly bring on its decomposition.

Nay, sir, the only way to preserve the vitality of the Republican party is to make it the party of progressive reforms; in other words, the new party, which is bound to come in one form or another. I do not mean that as a party of reforms it should lightly catch up every new “ism” hatched by heated brains; but it should resolutely address itself to the reformation of the abuses and the solution of the problems which daily become more evident to every observing mind.

Let it first and foremost promptly sweep away those political restrictions which were born of the necessities of a revolutionary period, and ought not to survive them; things which now, instead of protecting anybody, are only calculated to impede a gradual settlement of difficulties by natural process. Let it speedily abandon the preposterous idea that in days like these such restrictions