Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/362

336 said: “We can not support him?” Probably not one. Certainly not I. True, that case was not foreseen, but it has happened. There it is, and we have to deal with it. Shall we now again, like little children, say, because that case was not foreseen, therefore it does not concern us, although it may offer an opportunity to attain our real objects? What consistency is that?

I appeal to your consciences, my independent friends who have gone to the other side. If you should succeed, by combining with the Democrats, in defeating Governor Hayes and true reform, and after the triumph of your combination, that fountain of evil, the spoils system, continues to send forth its stream of demoralization and corruption, and a strengthened soft-money majority in the House of Representatives subjects the country to more years of harassing uncertainty and distress—what then? This is sad, indeed, you will say,—but we have been consistent! Oh, how great you will feel in your glory of consistency! But no, gentlemen, you will have been consistent. As independents, you professed devotion to great objects, among which stood first true reform and a sound financial policy.

You will have abandoned those great objects when you had an opportunity effectively to serve them. True consistency it is, always to will the right, zealously to seek the right and under any name and any change of circumstances, faithfully to stand by the right. Here we have a candidate at last who openly before all the world and with defiant courage occupies the platform we have so long, and almost hopelessly, been struggling for; and now should we turn our backs upon him, should we now betray our cause when a faithful, united effort can make it triumph?

I speak with feeling, for I have been long and with earnest sincerity in this struggle. It has been said of me