Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/238

214 be the preservation of the exceptional and invaluable advantages they now enjoy, and the growth on a congenial soil of a vigorous nationality in freedom, prosperity and power. If they yield to the allurements of the tropics and embark in a career of indiscriminate aggrandizement, their “manifest destiny” points with equal certainty to a total abandonment of their conservative traditions of policy, to a rapid deterioration in the character of the people and their political institutions and to a future of turbulence, demoralization and final decay. 



I beg leave to invite attention to a phase of the problem of municipal government which in the consideration of schemes of reform should never be lost sight of. It will be admitted that there is not a municipal government in this country, on whatever pattern organized, which will not work well when administered by honest, public-spirited, capable and well trained men. On the other hand, the best form of municipal government will work badly when administered by bunglers or knaves, the worse the longer they are in office. It is a matter of experience that municipal misgovernment develops its worst attributes when selfish and unscrupulous politicians succeed in continuing themselves, or their kind, in the possession of official power by the support of a large force of voters organized in their interest. This becomes possible in the same measure as the municipal officers have a more or less large mass of patronage to dispose of by a skillful distribution of which they can attract to themselves persons of local influence who together with their dependents and friends, and with the large number of expectants