Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/119

Rh country. The judgment of public opinion will be that the public interest should have been considered as first in importance.

If, for instance, you should be inclined to consider the appointment of General Walker as Secretary of the Interior on account of his eminent fitness and as the most available representative of the “independent” element of the Republican party, the objection that he hails from New England would, as I think, be generally deemed of small consequence. It would be forgotten in a fortnight; and you would have the benefit of his ability, experience and political connections thenceforward unquestioned.

Moreover, recent events make it more important than ever that you should have a good man belonging to the independent wing of the Republican party in your official family. It cannot have escaped you that if one-half of the “Republican scratcher's” vote in New York had gone to the Democrats, the election would have been lost. To be sure, the same may be said of “stalwart” elements. But there is this distinction to be made: while these stalwarts have no place of abode except in the party and the offices are to them a matter of great consideration, the class of the independents I speak of deem it of far greater importance that the Government be well conducted than what set of men conducts it, and are therefore not unwilling straightforwardly to oppose the party when they think it wrong. Besides, no man with open eyes will fail to observe that the general tendency is decidedly in the direction of independent politics, and that the independent element is therefore likely to grow steadily in strength. The feeling in favor of “a change,” after the Republican party had been in power for twenty years, was very strong, and it would have been almost irresistibly so, had the Administration during the last four years been more open to attack. That feeling in favor of “a change” will be