Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/197

Rh and Representatives, the lawmakers of the Republic, vehemently pressing such action. Imagine them to take up their daily papers and to find in one of them a despatch announcing that yesterday 150 new postmasters were appointed, among them fifty in the place of persons removed, mostly because they have been in office four years; just long enough to make them experienced and useful postmasters; in another paper a jubilant outcry that the “headsman” in Washington is vigorously swinging his axe and making the heads fly; and in still another a threatening growl at the slowness with which the executioner is doing his work, and which is chilling the enthusiasm of the party. Imagine these bedlam scenes to be the pictures these observers would carry home with them of American practical sense, of the American development of democratic institutions, of the fruits of American civilization, of the character of this great Republic of ours, which we proudly think should be in all things an elevating example, a guiding star to all nations on earth!

The shame of the fact that the spoils system, of which all this is but the natural outgrowth, has prevailed among us for more than half a century, we cannot hide from the searching eyes of mankind—just as in times gone by we could not hide the hideous blot of slavery. Nor is the existing evil of less moment than that which we have overcome. We find it recorded that a few days after the fall of Richmond, Abraham Lincoln pointed out to a friend the crowd of offtceseekers besieging his door, and mournfully said: “Look at this. Now we have conquered the rebellion; but here you see something that may become more dangerous to this Republic than the rebellion itself.” But as we overcame slavery and the rebellion, so the American people can again furnish the proof that, however strongly an evil may be entrenched in power