Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/385

Rh In a democracy, not only constitutional principles, but also constitutional forms should be observed with particular conscientiousness; for laxity in the respect for constitutional forms will soon lead to disregard of constitutional principles, and then to arbitrary rule.

Nothing can be more seductive, demoralizing and perilous in a democracy than the adoption of the idea that the end justifies the means.

The degree of economy in public expenditures may be taken as the barometer of honesty in the public service. A lavish administration will always run into corruption.

These truisms—trite commonplaces you may call them—will be accepted by almost everybody in theory. They are but too recklessly overlooked in political practice, and can, therefore, not too often be recalled to popular attention. I, for one, deem it my duty as a citizen to keep them clearly in view when choosing between parties and candidates in casting my vote.

Having started out in public activity with the Republican party in the earliest days of its youth, I remained its enthusiastic adherent so long as it was the party of liberty and human rights—as it proudly called itself, “the party of moral ideas.” It is now something very different. It is more and more becoming a party owned by rich men who want to become, through it, still richer. While many of its leading men treat the principles of the Declaration of Independence—once its Magna Charta—with supercilious contempt, as antiquated nursery rhymes, the party speaks with rapture about our material prosperity and our growing wealth, boasts of them as the product of its policies and parades them as its main title to continued popular confidence and support.

The boast that the great advances of this country in wealth and prosperity were owing to the Republican policy of high protection is simply a slander on the