Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Two).djvu/136

 without regard to person or station, without benefit of clergy. …

“I repeat it, and I cannot impress it upon your minds too solemnly: Our liberty and the honor and prestige of this Republic cannot be preserved unless you raise the standard of political morals; and this is the way to do it.”

Such sentiments were warmly applauded by a Republican mass meeting in 1858. And what I somewhat crudely expressed there has remained the rule of my political conduct all through my long life. Indeed, subsequent experience has only served to strengthen my conviction that the despotism of party organization constitutes one of the greatest and most insidious of the dangers threatening the vitality of free institutions of government—all the more, the freer those institutions are. Of this I shall have more to say in connection with later events.

When the political campaigns of 1858 were over, I thought it was high time for me to settle down in the regular calling for which I had prepared myself. I made application to the Circuit Court sitting in Jefferson County, Wisconsin, for admission to the bar, and my petition was granted without ceremony. Indeed, the proceeding was simple in the extreme. It consisted in the presentation of my request by a lawyer of Watertown, a smile and a nod by the judge, a hand-shake, the signing of a paper, and finally a moderate tipple and a hilarious exchange of lawyers' jokes at the village tavern near by. I had the good fortune of becoming associated in business with Mr. Halbert E. Paine, a young lawyer practicing in Milwaukee. He was one of the finest characters I have ever known, a gentleman in the best sense of the word, and a patriot capable of any self-sacrifice. Whenever in later years I rose into public position, my first thought always was to find some way