Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/127

Rh tation of laws and of constitutional provisions, or in justification of governmental practices. When a thing, no matter how questionable, has once been done by the government, and approved, or even acquiesced in, by the people, that act will surely be used as a justification of its being done again. In nothing is the authority of precedent more dangerous than in defending usurpations of governmental power. And it is remarkable how prone the public mind is, especially under the influence of party spirit, to accept precedent as a warrant for such usurpations, which, judged upon their own merits, would be sternly condemned. And every such precedent is apt to bring forth a worse one. It is in this way that the most indispensable bulwarks of free government, and of public peace and security, may be undermined. To meet such dangers the American people should, if ever, remember the old saying that “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”

I am not here as a partisan, but as an American citizen anxious for the future of the Republic. And I cannot too earnestly admonish the American people, if they value the fundamental principles of their government, and their own security and that of their children, for a moment to throw aside all partisan bias and soberly to consider what kind of a precedent they would set, if they consented to, and by consenting approved, the President's management of the Philippine business merely because “we are in it.” We cannot expect all our future Presidents to be models of public virtue and wisdom, as George Washington was. Imagine now in the Presidential office a man well-meaning but, it may be, short-sighted and pliable, and under the influence of so-called “friends” who are greedy and reckless speculators, and who would not scruple to push him into warlike complications in order to get great opportunities for profit; or a man of that inordinate ambition