Page:Speeches of Carl Schurz (IA speechesofcarlsc00schu).pdf/240

230 speaking or listening will then, no longer controlled by public opinion, feel an irresistible desire to act. You may now hear strange speeches, but then you would see stranger enterprises. The anti-slavery sentiment, which now is speaking, listens also to what others may have to say. Make it dumb, and you will make it, at the same time, deaf. Do you not know, that with those who are deaf and dumb it is difficult to reason? If you want a man to hear you, give him also permission to speak. You are afraid of fanaticism! You can watch and counteract fanaticism that works itself out in speaking. But impose silence upon it, and it will most surely find a secret field of operation, where it will elude your eye, and baffle your efforts to control it. You are afraid of demagogism and political intrigue! Bring demagogism to the test of free discussion, and it will soon unmask itself, and intrigue has lost its life-element, when in the open light of day argument struggles with argument.

But you may say that fanaticism and demagogism, if armed with the power of speech, may pervert the popular mind, and in appealing to the passions or the imagination of the multitude mislead their reason. I remember the time when, previous to the great outbreak in 1848, the first symptoms of an approaching change became perceptible. A rigid censorship muzzled the press; stringent police regulations rendered open discussion of political matters impossible; but a secret literature had sprung up, little volumes, often copied in manuscript, went from hand to hand, and from time to time we would hear of a liberal speech delivered by men a little more daring than others. The strangest doctrines of political and social organization were thus propagated, and the most adventurous plans of future action seriously formed and entertained. All those who felt sensible of the pressure of an absolute government, grasped at this forbidden fruit with morbid