Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/250

216 have no doubt you think, or at least you have persuaded yourself to think, that you are doing that which is best not only for yourself but for the country. Pardon me for entreating you to reëxamine carefully the reasons which have brought you to that conclusion, before you irretrievably commit yourself. You can scarcely fail to find that the question you have to deal with in determining your position is not a mere secondary point of policy upon which one might disagree with his party while at the same time voting the party ticket. It is this time one of those moral questions which touch the most vital spot in the working of our institutions. The election of Mr. Blaine to the Presidency will be a virtual indorsement of corrupt practices by the American people. It will establish a precedent teaching the growing generation and those coming after it, that a man may freely use his official power for private gain and still be considered by the American people worthy of the highest honors of the Republic. The crop of demoralization which will spring from such a seed, is incalculable. It may poison the whole future of the Republic.

To contribute to such a result or merely to the possibility of it is a thing which a man of your way of thinking can hardly feel easy about. I cannot think that you do and that you ever will. And such, I am sure, is the belief of those of your friends for whose confidence and esteem you have hitherto cared most. If you really do not feel quite certain that you are right you should consider the risk you are running,—a risk which you have perhaps not quite measured.

You will find all at once your position essentially changed. Those who have been your friends, the circle to which you naturally belong, will perhaps not loudly censure you. But you will soon begin to feel that your relations are no longer what they used to be. You will