Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/266

240 in New York, sincerely desiring to serve the best interests of the American people, beg leave to submit to your candid consideration the following appeal: A National election is approaching under circumstances of peculiar significance. Never before in our history has the public mind been so profoundly agitated by an apprehension of the dangers arising from the prevalence of corrupt tendencies and practices in our political life, and never has there been greater reason for it. We will not display here in detail the distressing catalogue of the disclosures which for several years have followed one another in rapid succession, and seem to have left scarcely a single sphere of our political life untouched. The records of courts, of State legislatures and of the National Congress speak with terrible plainness, and still they are adding to the scandalous exhibition. While such a state of things would under any circumstances appear most deplorable, it is peculiarly so at the present moment. We are about to celebrate the one hundredth birthday of our National existence. We have invited the nations of the earth on this great anniversary to visit our land and to witness the evidences of our material progress, as well as the working and effects of that republican government which a century ago our Fathers founded. Thus the most inspiring memories of our past history are rising up before us in a new glow of life, forcing upon us the comparison of what this Republic once was, what it was intended to be and what it now is; and upon this we have challenged the judgment of civilized mankind conjointly with our own. There is much of which every American
 * —A conference of citizens assembled