Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/279

Rh of Representatives has done this, and then the American people, in full view of these facts, deliberately elect that man their President—I ask you soberly and candidly, and I hope you will ponder it well, do you not think that the American people in doing so will put a disgrace upon themselves and upon the Republic? And more. We may be ever so lenient as to the private morals of public men. We may overlook ever so readily delinquencies in private conduct. But when a public man has conspicuously betrayed and prostituted high official trust for pecuniary gain, and is then elevated by the people, knowing this, to higher official trust and honor, do you not think that such a precedent and example will have a fearfully demoralizing and corrupting effect upon the public mind and come home to us in incalculable dishonor and disaster? If you have not thought of this, is it not time you should?

Look around you. Ours is certainly a magnificent country. It is inhabited by a powerful and energetic people, living under free institutions devised with uncommon wisdom. We have accomplished much. Wars and rebellions, small and great, we have successfully gone through. In spite of all sorts of errors and blunders we may have committed we have achieved wonderful successes. We have grown rich and great and civilized, and we find ourselves surrounded with all the elements of further and still greater success and progress. A grand prospect, apparently without bounds. And yet there is something which disquiets us. It is the germ of a moral disease which threatens the vitality of this great Commonwealth. You observe with alarm the morbid eagerness spreading among our young people to get rich without productive work; how this eagerness becomes more and more unscrupulous in the means it employs; how defalcations and embezzlements in places of public