Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/189

Rh time, that organization would have saved itself many humiliations.

It is, therefore, no sentimental partiality for the Republican party that brings me here. Whether the Republican party will put itself in a position to deserve support in the Presidential election of 1876 remains to be seen. Whether the Democrats will do so, remains to be seen also. My opinion has long been, and I have not concealed it, that the patriotic men of the Republic might do better than depend upon either. That well meaning citizens should so frequently have found themselves compelled to support one party, not because it had their approval and confidence, but because the other party appeared still worse, is not only a condition of politics unworthy of a free, intelligent and high-minded people, but one of the most prolific sources of the corruption and demoralization of our political life. In that situation we have been for years; and there is now something going on in Ohio which threatens to continue that state of things for the year 1876 only in an aggravated form.

Proclamation has been made by the Democratic leaders of Ohio that this State campaign is to be of decisive effect as to the issues of the Presidential election of 1876, and in the very front of these issues, conspicuous before all others, they have placed one which involves not only the material interests, but the character, the good name, the whole moral being of the American people. An attempt is being made to secure the endorsement by the people of the greatest State of the West, one of the greatest States in the Union, of a financial policy which, if followed by the National Government, would discredit republican institutions the world over, expose the American people to the ridicule and contempt of civilized mankind, make our political as well as business life more than ever the hot-bed of gambling and corruption and plunge the country