Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/308

274 make light of this charge. But what alarms me and what would greatly distress other friends of good government is the apprehension, that your laudable desire to vindicate and promote virtue in all private relations might be allowed to stand in the way of your making your great influence felt in behalf of the great cause of public virtue in the present pressing emergency. You will certainly not fail to see that if this cause does not receive the full support of those devoted to it now, the consequences will be so disastrous to the whole American people that no good man in a position of influence will like to share the responsibility for having checked the movement for honest government now going on, on such grounds. 

 &emsp; I have received your kind letter of yesterday and beg leave to say in reply that I shall read with sincere interest your defense of Mr. Blaine when you make it, and you will do me a favor by sending me a copy of it so that it may under no circumstances escape my attention. And you may count upon it that, if you convince me of error either in my premises or my conclusions, I shall candidly say so. But, as I have given much thought to this matter and spared no trouble to get at the truth, and as I know I have made my inquiries and drawn my conclusions in a conscientious spirit, I cannot refrain from saying that, so far, I firmly believe I am right. 

 &emsp; I thank you for the copy of your speech. Nothing could be better in matter and manner, in tone and structure. It