Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/386

362 He could not put his name to such a measure, but, inasmuch as after all it would lighten many tariff burdens that rested heavily upon the people, he permitted it to become a law without his signature.

The fate Mr. Cleveland's tariff reform policy met in Congress marked two facts. One was that he had lost the leadership of the Democratic party; and the other, that the Democratic party was in process of fatal disintegration, owing to the want of unity of purpose and to the destruction of the only leadership that possessed any moral force. Henceforth it was at the mercy of the machine politicians and of such distracting influences as the silver movement. The effect produced upon the country by the performances of the Democrats in Congress was instantaneous. The independents who had aided the Democratic party in the elections of 1890 and 1892 turned away with disgust. The best part of the Democratic constituency were utterly disheartened. The question was seriously debated among its very friends, whether the Democratic party was at all capable of carrying on the Government. We receive the impression of burlesque, or of Mephistophelian irony, when we now read a speech delivered by Mr. Gorman in the Senate after he had well-nigh completed the disfigurement of the tariff bill. “Mr. President,” said he, “we are nearing the end. After twenty years of progress, of positive growth, of constant development and of universal enlightenment, the Democratic party and the American people are within sight of the promised land. Emancipation is at hand. Years of arduous labor by unselfish and patriotic men cannot count for nothing. Fruition is as inevitable as fate. I repeat, it is near at hand. Now of all times the sun of Democracy is at the meridian.” A few months after this triumphant utterance of the leader of the Senatorial plot, the Democrats suffered an overwhelming defeat in the