Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/60

26 and Congressmen. Who will tell me that it is certain they will be more conscientious with regard to the national debt than they showed themselves with regard to their own? Have we a right to expect a sound financial policy? While there are many good, sound-money men in the Democratic party, it is equally well known that the Democratic party has irresistibly attracted to its fold a very large majority of the Greenbackers, inflationists and fiat-money men. It has, indeed, in its national platforms of late declared for sound money; but in 1876, while it pronounced for resumption it demanded at the same time the repeal of the resumption law. I ask, what would have become of resumption had the resumption law been repealed? But while thus speaking of sound money in their national platforms, is it not equally true in a large number of the States the most prominent inflationists are put forward for the highest honors followed by the masses of their party? So General Ewing, in Ohio, so General Butler, in Massachusetts, so Mr. Landers, in Indiana; while in Maine, Democrats and Greenbackers fuse in cordial embrace, and while in many of the Western and most of the Southern States the Democrats almost en masse represent unsound financial ideas. Is it not true, that to the very last, resumption was opposed in Congress by Democratic Congressmen? Why, when General Hancock was nominated, the attraction for the Greenbackers seemed to be so strong that the venerable Peter Cooper and General Sam. Carey, of Ohio, were among the first to pay to him their devotion and wish him success.

Now, can anybody foretell what will happen in these respects in case of a Democratic victory? In fact, we do not know whether the advocates of the public faith or the repudiationists, whether the hard-money men or the inflationists, are the strongest element in the Democratic