Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/319

Rh My own public life has been a very brief and insignificant one, extending little beyond the duration of a single term of Senatorial office, but in that brief period I have seen five Judges of a high Court of the United States driven from office by threats of impeachment for corruption or maladministration. I have heard the taunt from friendliest lips that, when the United States presented herself in the East to take part with the civilized world in generous competition in the arts of life, the only product of her institutions in which she surpassed all others beyond question was her corruption. I have seen in the State in the Union foremost in power and wealth four judges of her courts impeached for corruption, and the political administration of her chief city become a disgrace and a byword throughout the world. I have seen the chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs in the House, now a distinguished member of this Court, rise in his place and demand the expulsion of four of his associates for making sale of their official privilege of selecting the youths to be educated at our great military school. When the greatest railroad of the world, binding together the continent and uniting the two great seas which wash our shores, was finished, I have seen our National triumph and exaltation turned to bitterness and shame by the unanimous reports of three Committees of Congress, two of the House and one here, that every step of that mighty enterprise had been taken in fraud. I have heard in highest places the shameless doctrine avowed by men grown old in public office, that the true way in which power should be gained in the Republic is to bribe the people with the offices created for their service, and the true end for which it should be used when gained is the promotion of selfish ambition and the gratification of personal revenge. I have heard that suspicion haunts the footsteps of the trusted companions of the President. These things have passed into history. The Hallam or the Tacitus or the Sismondi or the Macaulay who writes the annals of our time will record them with his inexorable pen.

The man who spoke thus (Mr. George F. Hoar, of Massachusetts) was not a political opponent of those