Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/269

Rh appear like a mockery and farce if we permit our public concerns to drift into that ruinous anarchy which corruption must necessarily bring in its train, because it destroys the confidence of the people in their self-government, the greatest evil that can befall a republic. It is a simple question of life or death. A corrupt monarchy may last by the rule of force; a corrupt republic cannot endure.

It is useless to console ourselves with the idea that the corruption amongst us must be ascribed solely to the immediate effects of the civil war, and will, without an effort at reform, soon pass away. There is another cause which is not transitory, but threatens to become permanent. It is that system which has made the offices of the Government the mere spoils of party victory; the system which distributes the places of trust and responsibility as the reward of party service and the bounty of favoritism; the system which appeals to the mean impulses of selfishness and greed as a controlling motive of political action; the system which degrades the civil service to the level of a mere party agency, and, treating the officer as the hired servant of the party and taxing him for party support stimulates corruption and places it under party protection; the system which brings the organization of parties under the control of their most selfishly interested, and therefore most active element—the place holders and the place-hunters—thus tending to organize a standing army of political mercenaries to be paid out of the treasury of the Government, who by organized action endeavor to subjugate the will of the people to their ends through the cultivation of a tyrannical party spirit.

Every student of our political history knows that since the spoils system was inaugurated, corruption has steadily grown from year to year, and so long as this system