Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/112

88 There is a school of pessimists growing up among us who, whenever anything goes wrong, are ready to declare democratic government a failure and to despair of the Republic. I do not mean that insignificant and ridiculous class of poor beings who affect to be ashamed of calling themselves Americans, ape the customs of foreign aristocracies and run after foreign titles. They are simply snobs. But I mean certain more serious persons whom the contemplation of the frequent mishaps in the conduct of popular government has made faint-hearted and gloomy. If their dismal state of mind only led them more sharply to find fault and criticise, it would do no harm, and might do good. But when it goes so far as to discourage every attempt at improvement as useless, it is harmful indeed. Let us remind these pessimists that if they apply the same methods of criticism and the same reasoning by which they make our democratic government a failure to aristocratic or to monarchial government, they will surely make them out failures likewise; and so every other kind of government, until at last they will reach the conclusion that all forms of government are failures, and that it is absolutely useless to try any. Only anarchy will remain, and they are not likely to make that out a success.

I, for my part, although being beyond the time of youthful illusions, believe that a democratic republic will prove the most excellent form of government, if administered, not necessarily by angels, but by a fairly virtuous, self-respecting, patient, self-restraining, sensible, industrious, liberty-, peace- and order-loving people; and that the Americans, in the same measure as they are and remain such a people, will successfully maintain such a government, and be strong and happy in its enjoyment. It must essentially be a government of public opinion expressed in the forms of law. Such a government will,