Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/453

Rh sacrifice any of his “policies” so-called, concerning the tariff, the trusts and the railroads; and this will be all the easier to him, as with regard to those things he has no convictions, nor even clear opinions. And no pride of moral courage will stand in his way. He shrinks from no moral self-humiliation.

It seems to me even more probable that the Republican party will be split by the force of antagonisms springing from present economic conditions, in spite of Roosevelt's self-abasing efforts to hold it together. But no matter how it happens if only it happens at all. 



&emsp; I regret very much that I cannot attend your meeting next Wednesday night. I am heartily with you as to the object the meeting is to serve. The enthusiastic uprising of the popular conscience and of civic pride against corrupt ring-rule in Philadelphia is among the most hopeful signs of the times—perhaps the most hopeful of all. Of course Mayor Weaver, in his brave fight against the rapacious despotism, and the good people who stand by him with so much energy deserve all possible praise and encouragement from every true American. But the people in their righteous wrath should not forget that the thieving machine-politicians are not the only culprits to be held up to public loathing and execration. Many of them are simply poor wretches who hardly know better. Fully as guilty and even guiltier, are the “highly respectable” receivers of the stolen goods, the instigators and principal beneficiaries of the public robbery, who use the corrupt politicians as their tools in plundering the city or the State or the Nation; who, in order to fill their own pockets, contrive to debauch legislatures and executive