Page:Speeches of Carl Schurz (IA speechesofcarlsc00schu).pdf/238

228 the press are most scrupulously respected, there is the least danger of trouble and disorder in the State. He will, perhaps, at first, not understand this.

But you ask him: “How do you maintain law and order at home?” And he will reply: “By suppressing the expression of opinions which run against the ruling system of government.” “Is the order which you maintain, by such means, never endangered and interrupted?” “Yes, it is from time to time. In Russia the nobility and officers of the army are in the habit of forming conspiracies, and killing off an Emperor, now and then. In France we have our revolutionary outbreaks at almost regular periods. A few thousand people are slaughtered, kings driven away, governments broken up, and the confusion is general.” “And what opinions are entertained by those who form the conspiracies in Russia, or who make the revolutions in France?” “Just those the expression of which the government has seen fit to suppress, and, I am astonished to see, they are very much like those which I find here in every newspaper and in everybody's mouth.”

That is what the good chief-of-police does not understand; and yet, nothing is plainer.

Here is a man who is blessed with an active brain. His mind conceives an idea which becomes dear to his heart, because he is profoundly convinced of its justness and rectitude. He sees things in actual life which run contrary to his conviction of right, and the idea he harbors in his soul struggles for utterance. But when he attempts to lay before the conscience of his neighbors the sentiments he cherishes in his heart, he is told: “Thou shalt not speak.” His soul retracts within itself, and as he scrutinizes his own thoughts, he becomes more and more convinced that he is right. The secret activity of his mind tortures him; what lives in him will out, but again