Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/46

12 and almost immediately afterward found itself compelled to admit that for the peace of the country and as a basis for future development these Constitutional amendments had to be maintained.

Coming down to more recent history, when the Republicans in Congress had passed the resumption act in 1875, and the fruit of the restoration of specie payments was almost ripe to be plucked, the Democratic party in its National Convention of 1876 thought it a smart thing to declare that the very act passed for bringing specie payments was an impediment in its way and must be repealed. And who is there to deny now that had the act been repealed under the pressure of all the inflation elements in the country, the confusion of our financial policy necessarily ensuing would have prolonged the evils of an irredeemable paper currency under which we were then suffering? I need not accumulate further examples to show how incapable the Democratic party proved itself to understand and appreciate not only the immediate requirements of the times but facts that had been virtually accomplished, and how its greatest efforts were directed to the end of obstructing things that had become inevitable, and which it afterwards found itself compelled to admit as good.

And now in this year of 1880, when the war issues are fairly behind us; when by its conciliatory spirit and its strict observance of Constitutional principles the Government has removed all the elements of discord between the two sections which it was in its own power to remove; when, aided by a wise and successful financial policy, general prosperity is again blessing the land, and when the people look above all things for enlightened practical statesmanship that well understands the questions it has to deal with to foster and develop that prosperity; now the Democratic party knows nothing better to do than to set aside all its statesmen of known and settled opinions,