Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/87

Rh the prevailing sentiment in it may be in favor of what is called revenue reform. But I have not only noticed in their last national platform a resolution strongly squinting the opposite way, but on this very floor I have observed a strange tendency to compromise on that question according to local interests. Besides, the tariff question is not the only, it may perhaps not even be the most important, question of the future.

I read in Democratic papers that their party has always been in favor of civil service reform. This is news to me. I cannot forget that the principle “To the victors belong the spoils” is of Democratic origin; that they have inaugurated the system and developed the abuses under which we now suffer, and if these abuses have multiplied it is only because, in consequence of great necessities, the machinery of the civil service was made more complicated and extensive. I have neither heard from a Democratic leader, nor have I read in a Democratic newspaper, of any practical proposition of civil service reform which would lead me to believe that any other change was intended than to transfer the offices from Republican to Democratic hands, and to let the vicious method of appointment and removal continue. If I am mistaken I shall be glad to be corrected.

But the most prominent feature of the course of the Democracy in our days has been that it did not keep pace with, but continually lagged behind, the progress of the times. I will not rehearse the catalogue of Democratic sins committed during the war. I am not given to that. But here is a point touching the living present. While on the Republican side mistakes were made in relying for the development of the new order of things too long on a policy of restriction, instead of giving wider range to the natural process, the Democratic party impeded a healthy development, and kept up the