Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/508

474 without any particular system. It is the French rather than the Anglo-Saxons that want mathematically perfect constitutions and who are disappointed when they don't work to perfection.

But our people like a man, and when they get a notion that a President means to do right on the whole, notwithstanding many errors and shortcomings, and that in so doing he disturbs the “little games” of the machine-men, even if some very good people find fault with him and do so justly, the average people are apt to do what I must think is demonstrably unreasonable, but which is yet profoundly characteristic of our people, and that is to stand by him, right or wrong.

I hope, therefore, that our report will deal very gently with Mr. Cleveland, even more so than does the original draft, and I intend to look at it again with the view of suggesting modifications in the direction I suggest. 



&emsp; I thank you for your letter of January 31st as well as the postscript received yesterday. On the whole I must confess that your account of your interview with the President makes upon me a melancholy impression. His mind seems to be controlled by irritation at his critics rather than by an intelligent endeavor to disarm their criticism. That irritation threatens to become somewhat morbid. Last night I saw a letter he had addressed a day or two ago to one of his friends here, in which he expressed the opinion that the Independents were working for the same object as the extreme spoilsmen, such as Dana and others, to ruin him.

The explanations he gave you do not explain anything. It certainly does not justify his submission to Gorman's influence when he says that he might have done worse