Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/394

370 interests and the vindictive hatred of greedy schemers with more self-sacrificing fortitude than he. The spectacle of the President of the United States, in the small hours of the night, poring over the details of bills granting public money for rivers and harbors, or for pensions, or for public buildings, and what not, to satisfy himself whether the people's interests were well guarded, and then, whenever he detected fraud, or wastefulness, writing his veto messages with an indefatigable and unflinching sense of duty—that spectacle has not seldom been held up to disdain and ridicule by unprincipled or light-headed persons. But the more thoughtfully the patriotic citizen contemplates it, the more worthy will he find that President of the admiration, confidence and gratitude of the people.

No thinking man denies that corruption and profligacy, the tendency to make the Government an agency for private support and the loose methods of doing the Government's business which minister to such evil practices are among the gravest dangers besetting democratic institutions. The more highly should we value among our officers of state that courage of conscience which fears nothing, and that devotion to duty which shuns no drudgery to protect the purity of the Government and the character and interests of the Nation. Indeed, there was something of civic heroism in the figure of President Cleveland as during the expiring days of his term he sat in the political solitude of the White House, to the last moment plodding in the accustomed way, elaborately writing out his enlightened and cogent objections to an illiberal immigration bill, in spite of the clamor in favor of it; studying appropriations and casting them aside if extravagant, and vetoing grants of pension if unwarranted by fact or equity—although he well knew that in most cases Congress would pass such acts of legislation over