Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/289

Rh self through its majority in the House of Representatives hostile to hard-money—would nevertheless have us believe that the hard-money interest would be safe in its hands, it must of necessity give us, both by explanations and by acts, stronger guarantees than we should require of a party with better antecedents. In order to deserve confidence, the Democratic Convention should at least have adopted a hard-money platform, free from all stipulations and compromises, and then have nominated for the Presidency—and no less for the Vice-Presidency—candidates whose principles in regard to the hard-money question stood beyond the reach of doubt. Less than this could not have been demanded. And what has the Democratic party done in its Convention? After arraigning the Republicans for great sins of omission, chiefly to raise a dust for the concealment of its own far worse record, it proposes as the only specific measure the repeal of the resumption bill of January, 1875!

You and I have been of the same opinion, that the resumption bill of 1875 was insufficient in its details, but of value as the distinct promise of the acceptance of specie payments on the side of the Government. You and I during the session of this Congress have condemned every attempt to repeal the resumption bill as a maneuver of the inflationists. With perfect truth you have declared in the Staats-Zeitung that “such a repeal without at the same time accepting some practical measure for specie payments would be a moral victory of the inflationists.” You and I know that for two years past the battlecry of the inflationists has been the repeal of the resumption act, and if now the Democratic platform in acting upon the finance question presents as its only specific demand that the resumption bill shall be repealed, every honest hard-money man who seriously considers the question will ask what does this mean? The reason