Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/440

416 at the Custom House, both of them chuckling: “My fortune, however acquired!”

Remember [he said on another occasion], remember that the greatness of our country is not in the greatness of its (material) achievements, but in its promise—a promise that cannot be fulfilled without that sovereign moral sense, without a sensitive moral conscience. Commercial prosperity is only a curse if it be not subservient to moral and intellectual progress, and our prosperity will conquer us if we do not conquer our prosperity. Our commercial success tends to make us all cowards; but we have got to make up our minds in this country whether we believe in the power and goodness of God as sincerely as we undoubtedly do in the dexterity of the devil, that we may shape our national life accordingly, and not be praying now to good God, and now to good devil, and wondering which is going to carry us off after all. The whole of patriotism seems to consist at the present moment in the maintenance of this public moral tone. No voice of self-glorification, no complacent congratulation that we are the greatest, wisest and best of nations will help our greatness and goodness in the smallest degree. Are we satisfied that America should have no other excuse for independent national existence than a superior facility of money-making? Why, if we are unfaithful as a nation, though our population were to double in a year, and the roar and rush of our vast machinery were to silence the music of the spheres, and our wealth were enough to buy all the world, our population could not bully history, nor all our riches bribe the eternal justice not to write upon us: “Ichabod, Ichabod, thy glory is departed.” But I am not here to counsel you to despair and head-shakings. I am here to-day to say that this country which you are to inherit, and for which you are to be responsible, needs only an enlightened patriotism to fulfil all its mission and justify the dreams of its youth.

Equally high was his conception of government.

The object of government [he said in an address on the duty of the American scholar], the object of government