Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/441

Rh is human liberty. Laws restrain the encroachment of the individual upon society in order that all individuals may be secured the freest play of their powers. This is because the end of society is the improvement of the individual and the development of the race. Liberty is, therefore, the condition of human progress, and consequently that is the best government which gives to men the largest liberty, and constantly modifies itself in the interest of freedom.

And further in his oration on patriotism:

Our government was established confessedly in obedience to this sentiment of human liberty. And your duty as patriots is to understand clearly that by all its antecedents your country is consecrated to the cause of freedom; that it was discovered when the great principle of human liberty was about to be organized in institutions; that it was settled by men who were exiled by reason of their loyalty to that principle; that it separated from its mother country because that principle had been assailed; that it began its peculiar existence by formally declaring its faith in human freedom and equality; and, therefore, that whatever in its government policy tends to destroy that freedom and equality is Anti-American and unpatriotic, because America and Liberty are inseparable ideas.

Listen to his thoughts upon the relation of the citizen to his party—and he said this when he was still a party man of regular standing:

The most plausible suspicion of the permanence of the American Government is founded in the belief that party spirit cannot be restrained. The first object of concerted political action is the highest welfare of the country. But the conditions of party association are such that the means are constantly and easily substituted for the end. The sophistry is subtle and seductive. Holding the ascendancy of his party essential to the national welfare, the zealous partisan merges patriotism in party. He insists that not to