Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/270

246 sensible, self-respecting and patriotic men, at the miserable plight of your party. What has brought it to this? What a wicked fraud it is, this vaunted political smartness of the Hill school, which pretends to strengthen a party by organizing machines that would rather fit a band of marauders than an association of honest men, and must inevitably provoke the indignation of the public conscience; which will steal a Senate one year only to lose a whole legislature the next; which seeks party victory with political sharpers at its head, and runs the good aims of the party, and with it the party itself, into certain ruin and disgrace!

What a contemptible humbug it is, this so-called statesmanship which equivocates and shifts and dodges and squirms about every principle and public policy, and schemes and plots and intrigues for no higher object than personal advancement and power and plunder!

What a farcical spectacle it is, this so-called heroic campaign, Hill himself, the Great Mogul of the machine, with the brand of fate already upon his forehead, a sick devil in the monk's cowl, rushing from place to place, praising the tariff act he voted against, fawning upon Cleveland, whom he has been constantly stabbing in the back, whining about his self-sacrifice in taking the nomination, peddling around his canting promise as to what a good boy he will be, with the impudent assumption that, if he is defeated, the party will die!

And what a calamitous weakness it is, this so-called party loyalty of respectable men, which, when the party is led into iniquity and dishonor, indulges itself in highly moral protests; but then, when the test comes, supports, “for the good of the party,” the very leader in iniquity, and thus serves to nurse and encourage and propagate the very wickedness protested against!

Gentlemen of the Reform Organization of the