Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/494

460 derision, were he not a millionaire. His case is therefore in point.

It is high time, as [it] seems to me, that the American people, and especially those who have the peace and good order of society at heart, should give some attention to this matter. We are living in times in which the arraigning of the rich and the poor against one another is especially mischievous. It ought by all means to be avoided; it ought certainly not to be provoked. There is much alarm at the appearance of anarchism, of revolutionary theories and of all sorts of tendencies subversive of social order. What do you think will be the effect, if you give the poor to understand that the highest political powers, the power to make laws and the power to execute them, are virtually for sale, and that the highest offices are to be no longer for the able and trustworthy and meritorious who deserve them, but for the rich who can pay for them?

Massachusetts has had the reputation of maintaining a rather high standard of ability and character as to her principal public dignitaries. There have been lapses in her record, no doubt, but she has never, so far, succumbed to the prestige and the demoralizing influence of the money bag. It would be a pity, and, under existing circumstances, a disaster peculiarly deplorable, if she should do so now. Our Independent friends may be congratulated upon the unanimity and promptness with which they rallied to prevent such a misfortune. The straightforward and vigorous utterances of Mr. Andrew, the candidate they support, upon the subject of the use of money in elections, are especially gratifying. His success would not only do honor to Massachusetts, but, as an emphatic rebuke to the pretensions of millionairedom in politics, produce a very wholesome effect upon political life through out the country at a time when such an effect is much needed.