Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/327

Rh the last few years. I doubt whether the arbitrary use of the power of appointment and removal as a means of favoritism and reward and punishment has ever been carried to a more alarming extent. I said so years ago, and when I repeat it to-day, I do so with the assurance that a large majority of the Republican party have in the meantime come to the conclusion that I was right. I go further in saying that the resolution in the National Republican platform expressing indiscriminate approval of General Grant's Administration was a weak concession to the established party usage of courtesy at the expense of truth, and misrepresentation of public sentiment, felt to be such by a large majority of those who assented to it. While General Grant's great services in the civil war will always be held in the grateful remembrance to which they are justly entitled, I can tell my Republican friends that they can scarcely afford to equivocate about such things in the pending campaign. Let them have the manhood to say what they think; let them call things by their right names, and they will not only relieve their own souls, but stand in a better attitude before this generation as well as posterity.

And yet, in spite of all the unfortunate peculiarities of General Grant's character, which fitted him so little for the complex duties and responsibilities of civil government, even under his Administration not half of the mischief would have occurred which now stands recorded had not the vicious traditions of the spoils system furnished the means and pointed out the opportunities. If, when he came into power, nothing had been known with regard to the conduct of the civil service than the principles and practice of the early Administrations, even his arbitrary impulses might have accommodated themselves to the wholesome restraints of established usage. His Administration might, indeed, not have been as pure