Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/169

Rh of his zeal to quicken our own and his noble example to follow as best we can.

But if he were now here to dictate my speech, he would call it away from himself and direct it to the cause which he cherished so much, and which was in so large a sense his own. Indeed, the ultimate victory of this cause will be the fittest monument of this great citizen whom we who knew him well so warmly loved, and whose memory the American people can never too highly honor.

It is a comfort to his surviving friends to know that, although he did not witness the full consummation of his endeavors, he lived at least long enough to see his cause rise from small beginnings to a measure of success promising complete triumph at no very distant day. The question is only what President and what political party will carry off the greatest honors of the achievement.

I speak of this with so much assurance because civil service reform has grown and flourished in spite of the bitter hostility of an overwhelming majority of the professional politicians in both parties. They have exultingly proclaimed its death and burial a hundred times. It has survived an endless number of obituaries. They have derided it, and reviled it, and plotted for its destruction a hundred ways. Without knowing it, by their very enmity they have advanced its progress. Men have begun to respect and to love it for the enemies it has made. We have not far to seek for the reason. What is civil service reform? It is the application of common-sense and common honesty to the public service. And the American people are in the main a sensible and an honest people. It is the restoration to full power of honorable and patriotic motives in our political life. And the Americans are, in the main, an honorable and patriotic people. Therefore they will insist upon the general application and enforcement of civil service reform principles in the same measure