Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/276

252 may do things ever so obnoxious to good morals or good policy and still rightfully exact our support under all circumstances. In my correspondence with Secretary Gage I have shown, I think, that the dangers to our present monetary system are by no means as threatening now, as zealous partisanship represents them, and that we may freely act upon the question of imperialism without serious peril to our standard of value. I candidly believe so. But I frankly declare that even if the dangers so luridly depicted by the imperialists really existed, my position in the present crisis would be the same.

He would not have been counted a good American patriot who, at the time of the American revolution, had abandoned the cause of liberty and independence on account of the disastrous viciousness of the continental money, or who, during our civil war, had given up the cause of liberty and union because its defense brought on the dangerous issue of irredeemable paper dollars, or other economic perils; or who, at either of those periods had forsaken either of those causes for the reason that the men in position of leadership might hold obnoxious opinions or be inclined to do unwelcome things with regard to other matters. It is still remembered in how little esteem John Adams held the members of the Continental Congress, but how firmly he nevertheless, as a patriot, stood for the cause of his country.

And now a sober, candid and conscientious consideration of the circumstances before us should convince you, as it has profoundly convinced me, that the present crisis is fully as momentous as the revolution which created the Republic, and as the civil war which held it together and purged it of slavery. For now we find ourselves confronted by a powerful attempt, advancing under seductive guises, to fasten upon the country a policy essentially putting in peril the best fruits of the great struggles of the