Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/103

Rh It has stirred up their sense of duty and responsibility. It has quickened their public spirit. Seldom has public opinion been more vigilant in watching the conduct of the representatives and servants of the people; seldom has it been more powerful in enforcing the condemnation of malefactors and the correction of abuses. But a few years ago, any public man, who, against the wishes and pretended interests of his party, insisted upon the investigation and exposure of malpractice, could be trampled down and ostracized as a traitor. And now, immediately after a sweeping victory, the dominant party finds itself forced by an irresistible pressure of public opinion to put its own hands to a work but recently so detested, and the scandals of the Credit Mobilier, of the Sanborn contracts, of the moiety business and of the government of the District of Columbia, were ripped open; and, in the treatment of these things, the people were still more in earnest than some of the official investigators. For many years we have not had a session of Congress that was so free from job-legislation as the last, so much so indeed that the lobbymen could not pay for their dinners, and the restaurant-keepers were disconsolate. Public opinion hung like a thunder cloud over Washington, charged with dangerous electricity, and some of those who tried to construct the famous press-gag law as a lightning rod wish to-day they had never made the attempt while the people in conventions, and still more, at elections, are sitting sternly in judgment over those of their servants who cannot present a clean bill of health.

But more than that. While but a few years ago a man who refused to obey the behests of his party was not only ostracized as a traitor, but laughed at as a fool uselessly sacrificing himself in a windmill fight, we behold to-day all over the country countless thousands asserting their