Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/234

210 while able to save it. We have you by the throat and mean to hold you so.

If this be really the spirit of the Republicans in power the people will soon conclude that they are a public danger and a nuisance and ought to be got rid of at any cost. You certainly cannot wish your party to stand in such a light.

I repeat, therefore, that the Republican majority in Congress not only can, but, if only for its own moral salvation, will do this thing in case of necessity, and you, Mr. Secretary, then relieved of your partisan campaign service, will, as a good citizen, be one of the first to urge it to be done, if you sincerely think the currency law to be as defective as in your recent threat of disaster you represent it to be.

But do you really think that it is so defective and that the dangers you predicted owing to that defectiveness really threaten? In your letter you say that, since I had accepted “for argument's sake” your statements on these points, “there is no particular difference between us as to what Mr. Bryan, as President, could do under the law or in spite of the law as it now is.” You must pardon me for observing, Mr. Secretary, that when you tell the public that I agree with you on those points, you strain the truth rather violently. Accepting a statement “for argument's sake” means that we admit it only as a basis for reasoning, while we may really hold an entirely opposite opinion. And in this case I have, indeed, strong authorities for differing from you, and, curiously enough, among these authorities you, Mr. Secretary, occupy a very prominent place. About July 15th you gave out an interview on the identical points here in question, which has recently been republished, and which stands in strange contrast to the alarm blast sounded a month later. It is worth while to place the two utterances side by side: