Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/133

Rh Is it not well, is it not absolutely necessary that the attempt be emphatically rebuked, which the Democratic organization is making, and which will succeed, if their candidates are elected, to commit the people of Missouri for the principle of repudiation as it stands in the Democratic platform—a commitment which cannot fail most grievously to injure us by creating general distrust in our honesty, to drive capital away from our borders, and to blacken the character of our Commonwealth? This most important consideration alone should decide the mind of every citizen who has any conception of his true interests.

Is it not necessary that we should put the power of the Government in the hands of men who will vigorously wield that power to punish and suppress brigandage and murder with a relentless hand, men who, unmoved by local sentiment or partisan bias, will lift up the authority of the law from its disgraceful impotency, and will make the officers of the law do their whole duty without fear or favor? Men who will never permit themselves to forget, nor be surrounded with influences which will make them forget, that the protection of life and property is one of the first duties of the Government, as the Democratic organization seem to have forgotten it?

Is it not well and necessary, especially in times of business stagnation and distress like these, to lighten the bur dens weighing heavily upon the people by strict economy, to turn every dollar raised by taxation or derived as interest on public moneys to the benefit of the community, instead of making public officers rich, or even enabling political favorites to fatten still more upon the substance of the people, by increasing, as has been done, their already exorbitant perquisites?

Is it not well and necessary to break the despotic partisan rule which vociferously pronounces the sentence