Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/172

148 do, of course, not mean all the people. I do not mean the machine politicians of the two parties, who live on spoils. I do not mean Tammany Hall. I do not mean those poor creatures in Congress and in other high places who know they have not ability enough to sustain themselves as statesmen, and depend upon a following bought with patronage to prop them up. I do not mean the selfish speculators in politics, who find in the corruption underlying the patronage trade a congenial element. Nor do I mean those who like to be fed at the public crib, no matter whether they furnish an equivalent for their salaries. All these classes are the fast friends of the spoils system; but they form only a small minority of the American people. When I speak here of the people, I mean the men and women who earn an honest living by honest industry. I mean the patriotic citizens who have the welfare of the country, the success of free institutions and the honor of the Republic sincerely at heart.

In their earnest endeavor to serve the public interest, these people may be warm partisans. They wish their party to be successful and to win control of the Government. But a large majority of them are in their inward souls disturbed and disgusted when they see, after a party victory, hordes of partisans pounce upon the offices of the Government like a band of greedy mercenaries plundering a captured city. They are ashamed when, after the incoming of a new Administration, they hear of a President wishing to abolish this scandal but not being permitted to do so by the ravenous spoilsmen of the party, and of an official guillotine at work and of so many heads falling every day. This shame and disgust may not, by all who feel it, be loudly expressed in words; but nevertheless it exists, as in times gone by the conscientious abhorrence of slavery existed among the masses of the Northern people long before exciting events loosened their tongues.