Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/130

104 The question is, Have not these murders and highway robberies happened? Not I, but every man in the land who reads newspapers will answer that they have happened—not once, but time and time again. Have the perpetrators been arrested and punished? Not I, but every man in the land who keeps the run of current news answers that the perpetrators are at large, and are turning up every moment to do the same thing without being arrested, tried and punished. Has the power of the government been rigorously exerted to arrest this disgraceful scandal? The reading public all over the country remembers that the friends of the governor excused him for not acting efficiently, on the ground that he could not obtain the necessary aid from a legislature of his own party.

Has every political party in the State pronounced itself emphatically for a relentless suppression of these outrages and a vigorous enforcement of the laws? The whole country, reading the Democratic platform of Missouri, has learned that the Democratic party in State convention forgot all about it.

Is there not, in spite of this strange case of forgetfulness, at least a unanimous sentiment among the ruling party hostile to such disorders? The country learns that a leading organ of that party finds the young men who are “handy with knife and pistol,” and shoot and stab to their hearts content, rather a nice and desirable set of fellows, and almost the whole Democratic press lustily chimes in, calling a public slanderer and unworthy of regard every man who denounces those scandals and insists upon their repression.

Who defames the State now? Who frightens away immigration? In the first place, the men who committed the murders and robberies. In the second place, those wielding power, who so long suffered these things to be