Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/204

180 tact in the shape of patronage, for the purpose of carrying the desired legislation through Congress would be an utterly ruinous course. I have been in public life thirty-five years, part of the time in official position and all the time an attentive observer. I know of no attempt by a President thus to put through an important and warmly contested piece of legislation without arousing violent animosities and without ultimate disaster. Usually it has proved entirely useless too, as to the immediate object in view. Congressmen ask for places to strengthen themselves with their constituencies. Those who do this will not cast votes which they think will weaken them with their constituencies after having taken the places. But in your case such a policy would amount to the forfeiture of the greatest of your opportunities. You have those problems before you—the financial question, the tariff question and the abolition of the spoils system. With regard to the first two, your success is uncertain, for it depends upon Congress. As to the third, your success is in your own hands. And that success, if fully achieved, will send your name to posterity with immortal honors. If you proclaimed now, in addition to what you have already declared, that your recent experience has more than ever convinced you of the viciousness of the spoils system, that you are inflexibly determined not to make a removal and not to refuse a reappointment without conscientiously ascertained cause, and to make appointments only in the interest of the public service, and thus to put an end to spoils politics, you would not lose a single vote on your financial and your tariff policies that you otherwise would get, and you would array a public opinion on your side that would come to your aid with tremendous force. You would be recognized as one of the greatest benefactors of the American people. You might lose some partisans, but you would win a much larger number