Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/441

Rh certainly the worst which would make the law-abiding citizen fear for his own rights. 



You have chosen to continue our public conversation, and so be it. Your reply to my “open letter” strikingly presents the spectacle of the defendant after conviction making faces at the prosecuting attorney. But that will hardly change the judgment already pronounced by an intelligent public opinion. I might therefore dismiss your cry of distress without another word, did it not convey some valuable lessons.

Being a writer whose genius shines most brilliantly in quotations, you have sought to show that my public course has greatly displeased some politicians, and that they have spoken of it with marked acerbity. This is an old story, and I am only surprised at the meagerness of your display. I could have furnished you an abundance of more amusing material from my own collections. It is true, with others I have helped in defeating aspirants to high place, in baffling political speculators and in holding political parties after election to their preëlection pledges—an “obtrusive” practice which just now seems to be quite troublesome to statesmen like yourself. For this I have had to endure not only the candid criticism of fairminded party-men, which I always respect, but also an unusual measure of that general vilification to which the defeated candidate, the thwarted spoils-monger and the enraged party fanatic resort when ingenuous argument fails. But when you analyze the whole farrago you will find it to consist of endless variations of one theme,—that I have claimed the right, and hold myself in duty bound,