Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/419

Rh their weakness forever after. This or that political party may prove faithless to its pledges, and invite the discipline of defeat. You may sign this bill and make it a law—although I think it can hardly be the ambition of a governor to figure as the Buchanan of New York in the history of the State. If it does become a law it may indeed cast a shadow upon the fame of New York. It may serve for a short while to interrupt and retard the onward march of reform. But the whole reactionary attempt of which this bill is a part cannot finally stop that onward march. The present attempt can only succeed in reviving old abuses and scandals, and in furnishing fresh object lessons which will teach the people all the more clearly that the completest and most rigorous enforcement of the reform is imperatively required for the honor as well as the welfare of the Republic. And that will all the more certainly come.

We are, therefore, very far from begging here for the life of the reform movement. That is well enough assured. We ask only that trouble which is altogether useless and unnecessarily disturbing, be avoided. We may add by way of friendly caution that the time is not far when public men will be as sorry to have figured as the aiders and abettors of the barbarous and corrupt spoils system, as, in the North at least, other public men are sorry for having in the past made a record as aiders and abettors of slavery.

Humble private citizen as I am, it may appear in me a presumptuous fancy to imagine myself as occupying the seat of power now held by you. Pardon me for indulging myself in that dream for a moment, to consider what I would do in your place. I would—as I trust you do—keep steadily before my mind the solemnity of the oath I had sworn, “to support the constitution of the State according to the best of my ability.” I would ask myself