Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/426

402 life. I hardly know anything more unscrupulous and shameful than this effort to disturb the confidence of the business world merely for party advantage.

The things I have mentioned the Democratic party in power may reasonably be expected to do; and in doing them it will render a most urgently needed and immensely valuable service to the Republic. I believe also that, in view of the peculiar requirements of the time, the Democrats have chosen an eminently proper man for their candidate. Mr. Parker evidently is by temperament and mental habit, as well as by acquisition of knowledge par excellence, a judge; and it seems to me that just now, after all the confusing experiences we have gone through, it is peculiarly desirable that we should have a true judge in the Presidential chair—a man who knows the law; who reveres the law; who will never permit his emotions to make him overlook the law; who will never presume that his will is law, and who will constantly keep in mind that a democracy will drift into chaos as soon as its government ceases to be a government of law.

His conduct has also shown that he is a man of high self-respect. A nomination for the Presidency is a very great honor. But while Mr. Parker may have strongly desired it, he did not run after it. With quiet dignity he waited for it to come to him, and when it came under questionable circumstances, he would not take it at a sacrifice of his conception of duty. His famous dispatch to the St. Louis Convention extorted at first a general shout of admiration even from his political enemies. Only when they perceived the moral prestige it gave him, they began their mean and pitiable partisan efforts to drag that noble deed down to the level of a shabby campaign trick. More highly even than that dispatch I esteem a letter written by Judge Parker previous to his nomination in answer to the urgent request of some