Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/444

420 honestly believed, fidelity to my principles and aims demanded it. For instance, had I been “faithful” to the Republican party, I should have been “faithless” to my convictions as to the tariff. Had I been “faithful” to the Democratic party, I should have been “faithless” to my convictions as to the currency. (And here let me remark, by the way, that what you say in your letter of the constant high tariff policy of the Republican party betrays gross ignorance. You need only to read the Republican platforms since 1860 to find that the high tariff for protection is a Republican policy of comparatively recent date.)

Evidently we do not think alike. Your highest boast is that you have “never voted any other than the straight party ticket.” To your mind obedience to the party organization in “voting the straight ticket” under all circumstances is a full discharge of the duties of citizen ship and the sum of political virtue. When you have “voted the straight ticket” you feel yourself free to repudiate the party's principles and to dishonor its pledges, just as if a citizen after having paid his taxes to the State may think himself licensed to break its laws. To disobey the party organization by not voting the straight ticket is to you “treason” to be abhorred and branded with ignominy. But if this duty of allegiance to party organization is so sacred on the side of one party, it is equally sacred on the other, for the relation of the individual to the party is the same. Now, Senator, what are you doing, when, as a stump orator or political manager before an election, you seek to draw voters from the other side to yours? What were you aiming at last year when, brimful of enthusiasm for the gold plank in the Republican platform, you made those brilliant speeches of which the historians of the campaign are so strangely silent? The countless Democrats you converted, did you not seduce