Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/452

418 being asked for, there is an excellent opportunity for ascertaining who among the officers of the Government has so betrayed him.

These may look like heroic remedies, but if it is true that a public pledge of the President has been violated, and a pledge, too, that had been believed in more than any other similar one for many years, then no remedy can be too heroic to avert the demoralization which such an event, unredressed, would inevitably bring in its train. A case in which with the public good, also a question of honor is involved, would seem to make heroic remedies appear the most natural ones.

I think I fully appreciate the difficulties of your position. In one of my first letters to you I endeavored to point out that the greatest danger to a reform Administration consisted not in general attacks upon its system, but in insinuating requests from apparently friendly quarters for this and that little concession, and in the disposition of the Administration to yield one little thing after another, until it finally woke up to the fact that it had yielded its whole character, and further, that however firm might be your own resolution to carry out your promises and purposes, your honor and good faith would be in a great measure at the mercy of those wielding authority under you, and that disappointment and failure were almost certain unless your subordinates were in hearty accord with your principles and objects or kept in the strictest discipline. I venture to say that if the Administration is now embarrassed, it is from these causes, and then none but heroic remedies will avail. The consequences of a lack of that accord or discipline are illustrated by the following letter in which an internal revenue collector in Virginia makes wanton and insolent sport of the President's reform policy, plainly defying his displeasure: