Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/226

192 leading man in the Committee on Public Lands, for the larger part of the time even its chairman. It was your special duty to watch this kind of legislation with untiring vigilance to protect the interests of the settlers. I showed that you voted for all these large land grants, whenever you voted at all, without a word of remonstrance, and that, while almost all the other practices you now complain of as abuses existed or grew up during that period, you never exerted your influence to check or remedy them. The loose language of the acts upon which the decision of the Supreme Court above referred to was based, elicited not a whisper from the leader of the Committee on Public Lands, the spokesman of the settler. If you could not prevent their adoption, you could at least protest against their objectionable or ambiguous clauses. But your voice was silent, and you simply voted “aye.” Your record in the Congressional Globe convicts you.

It is a fact known to every well-informed man that the mischievous results of the land-grant system have sprung from the reckless provisions of the granting acts, and not from the faithlessness of those who had to administer the laws as they stood. As one of the makers of those laws, and especially as the one man whose special business it was to watch and scrutinize them in behalf of the settlers, you can not escape your responsibility. The public records prove your failure in that duty. There is not a man in the land from whom false accusations against an executive officer would come with a worse grace than from you.

But that was not your only failure. Worse remains behind. At the close of your letter you address me in the following tremendous language: “It seems utterly incredible that you presided over the great home Department of the Government for four years; and the fact that the country has survived your administration is a fresh