Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/146

122 sound-money Democrats in Chicago, and I was told that they were all of the same mind.





The centennial anniversary of the death of George Washington, which we observe to-day, cannot but be full of solemn admonition to every American. It has always seemed to me that the greatest historic value of Washington's career to the American people consisted not so much in the battles he fought and in the fortitude with which he upheld the cause of his country during the darkest days of the Revolutionary war, as in the fact that as the first President of the United States he set up, at the very beginning of our republican government, a standard of wisdom, public virtue and patriotism which has been, and will always remain, to his successors in the Presidency as well as to all men in public power, the surest guide as to the principles to be followed, the motives to be obeyed and the public ends to be pursued. His wisdom was so unfailing that during the past century of our history this Republic achieved its best successes as it walked in the path of his precepts, and it suffered its failures as it strayed away from that path. His sense of public duty—the duty of serving the true interests of his country as he understood them—was so genuine, strong and courageous, that no adverse current of opinion, no fear of personal unpopularity, could shake it. He was not without party feeling, but party was never anything more to him than a mere instrumentality for serving the public good. Nothing could have been farther