Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/179

Rh be thoroughly exploded, and the back of the spoils system will be broken forever.

I venture to affirm that the President who gives the decisive impulse toward such a consummation will render the Republic a more lasting service, will entitle himself more to the gratitude of posterity and will achieve greater renown for himself by this one act than he could by the most ingenious device of taxation and the most brilliant financial policy. For he will have removed an evil threatening not only our material welfare, but the very vitality of our free institutions. He will have imparted a new moral spirit to our political life rendering infinitely easier the rational solution of the other problems hanging over us.

To doubt that President Cleveland sincerely wishes to accomplish this would be to doubt that he is an honest man. The question may be asked whether his party will not throw discouraging obstacles in his way, such as the Republican party threw in the way of President Grant, and his successors, and whether he can be moved by them from his purpose. But the Democratic party should be the last to do so, if it is to deserve the name it bears; for civil service reform is, in its field, the perfect realization of the true democratic principle.

The truest definition of democratic government is furnished by Abraham Lincoln's famous saying that it is “Government of the people, by the people, and for the people”: of the people, for the people constitute the sovereignty from which it springs; by the people, for the people through their chosen representatives and servants conduct it; for the people, for it is to be conducted solely for the people's benefit. The people are, therefore, evidently entitled to the best service they can get, and no interest, neither that of a political party nor that of any citizen, has a right to stand in the way. Those entrusted