Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/483

Rh As you will remember, in judging of the situation it has always been my central idea that the President could render no greater service to the country, to his party and to himself than by being strictly, conspicuously, even punctiliously, faithful to his word in spirit and letter. It will be the greatest service to the country, because nothing is more necessary for the elevation of our political morals and the promotion of reform than to eradicate the abominable popular notion that there is nothing like good faith or a sense of honorable obligation in politics, and that the pledges of a public man are made only for temporary effect. That notion he can eradicate by proving that a public pledge can be sacred to a man in high position above any other consideration and that it can be practically kept.

He will thus render the greatest service to his own party, because the popular approval, which his honest firmness cannot fail to command, will force his party up to a more elevated sense of duty and thus infuse into it new vitality.

And it will be the greatest service to himself, because it will secure to him a most enviable place in American history as a benefactor of his people not to speak of his impregnable and commanding position as the necessary man of his time.

The effect produced in the public mind by the attacks in Congress upon his reform policy shows clearly, I think, that I have not been mistaken as to the source of President Cleveland's strength.

It is for this reason that I have always been so anxious for a strict observance of his pledges, and that I have so earnestly deplored every real or apparent departure from them—such cases for instance as that of General Salomon and those brought out in the Senate debate. It is for this reason also that I advised a different course when the Senate