Carl Schurz

“ After his election to the governorship of New York, and, later, after his accession to the Presidency of the United States, the legendary Roosevelt appeared in strong phrase in his frequent addresses to the public. No governor, and, certainly, no President, has ever more earnestly admonished the people in numberless discourses with untiring iteration and in more emphatic language that, to be good and useful citizens, we must, above all things, conduct ourselves with “honesty, courage and good sense.” ”

“ For the simple reason, among others, that, although they were armed and we were not, they all knew that they—not one of them—could afford to risk a serious quarrel with the United States. They all knew, and know now, that this is a country of very great wealth, and practically inexhaustible resources in men and means; that the Americans are a people not only strong in numbers, but of exceptional ingenuity, energy and enterprise, and of a patriotic spirit that shuns no sacrifice; that this Republic, on its continental fastness, is impregnable, if not substantially unassailable ”

“ Our expenditures in times of peace for war armaments actually threaten to become larger and the pecuniary burdens heavier than those of any European state.
What reason is there for this? The United States are not, like England, a little island that might be starved by a blockade, and require, therefore, a large navy for defence. We have not, like Germany and France, powerful neighbors whose hostility might become dangerous. In both these respects we are perfectly safe. Or is there lurking anywhere else in the world a hostile power whose attack we might have to fear? ”

“ Parker evidently is by temperament and mental habit, as well as by acquisition of knowledge par excellence, a judge; and it seems to me that just now, after all the confusing experiences we have gone through, it is peculiarly desirable that we should have a true judge in the Presidential chair—a man who knows the law; who reveres the law; who will never permit his emotions to make him overlook the law; who will never presume that his will is law, and who will constantly keep in mind that a democracy will drift into chaos as soon as its government ceases to be a government of law. ”

“ Just here lies one of the most portentous problems of our political life—a problem from the solution of which it may depend whether this is to remain a democracy of real freemen governing themselves according to their intelligence and moral sense, or a mere battlefield for the contests of various unprincipled and rapacious party despotisms fighting for spoil. Every clear-sighted man knows this, and, no doubt, Mr. Roosevelt does. ”

“ It is more and more becoming a party owned by rich men who want to become, through it, still richer. While many of its leading men treat the principles of the Declaration of Independence—once its Magna Charta—with supercilious contempt, as antiquated nursery rhymes, the party speaks with rapture about our material prosperity and our growing wealth, boasts of them as the product of its policies and parades them as its main title to continued popular confidence and support. ”

“ President Roosevelt is an exceedingly interesting, picturesque and forcible character, who would have found a most congenial and glorious field of action at the time of the Crusades, but sometimes strangely fails to appreciate the higher moral aims of modern civilization. He is a patriotic man who has done very good service in several ways, and, being still young, is capable of doing much more in various important positions aside from the Presidency. His is a master nature, but this Republic does not want in the Presidency a master—least of all one who cannot master himself. ”

“ The idea that this country, of all known countries, the richest in natural resources, with its labor, the most intelligent, energetic and productive labor in the world, should need the highest protective tariff ever enacted in any civilized country to make our industries go and to save our people from ruin and starvation, is so wildly preposterous that I do not understand how any self-respecting man can utter it. ”

“ Thus, by opposing the policy which would be most sure effectually to weaken the Trusts, President Roosevelt has actually arrayed himself on the side of monopoly against the people. He may yet have to learn that in serving high protection he serves a set of hard, grasping, merciless taskmasters, who will make him do things which the legendary Roosevelt never would have dreamed of. I do not think it impossible that even the present Roosevelt, if kept in power, will be driven to rebel against their exactions, and that he may then return to the views and purposes of earlier and better days. ”

“ Ever since the spokesmen of the Republican party, the President at their head, have been busy hunting up reasons for not making that promise. Had they been equally intent upon finding reasons for making it, they would have discovered that it would be no less easy to recognize the independence of the Philippines than it was to recognize the independence of Cuba; that the cry that the American flag must never be hauled down is a vain and foolish cry, and that the flag was never more glorious than when it was hauled down from Morro Castle at Havana. ”

“ It is not the slightest exaggeration to say that in boss-and-machine-ridden States the boss-and-machine system flourishes to-day as if Theodore Roosevelt had never been governor of New York or President of the United States. In New York, by a sort of palace revolution, a new boss has displaced the old one, and it is still a question whether the new boss is not the worse of the two. ”

“ Tariff and Corruption.
It is indeed time that the American people should open their eyes to the meaning of these notorious facts: “A large number of manufacturing establishments, as well as their allied interests, receive from the Government favors or benefits of great money value in the shape of protective tariff legislation. The political party which, when in power, confers those benefits of great money value, turns to the interests so benefited for pecuniary aid to support it in its efforts to keep itself in power, or to regain power if it had temporarily lost it. ”

“ It is an experience as old as the world, that the friendship of good men is freely given when deserved, but that the friendship of the wicked has its price. When we find President Roosevelt in the company of such men we are far from suspecting that he loves such company, and we must not forget that characters of this kind will hang on the skirts of every Administration and offer their services while pursuing their own selfish aims. ”

“ Fifty years of political study and experience in this country have convinced me that if the American people mean to preserve the blessings of their free institutions, they must always keep in view certain truths.
The government of this Republic must be a government of law, not a government of adventure. ”

“ Of all agencies of corruption, the farthest reaching and the most generally demoralizing is a system of policy by which the Government deals out benefits of pecuniary value to special interests, those favored interests then to support by pecuniary aid the party controlling the Government. This is corruption organized on a national scale.
A democracy working through universal suffrage cannot have too many conservative influences of high authority to guide popular sentiments and to protect it against misleading seductions. ”

“ It has by a policy of adventure, conquest and arbitrary rule over subject nations set aside the fundamental principles upon which this Republic was founded, and thus dangerously weakened in our democracy the highest conservative influence—the popular adherence to our traditional doctrines and ideals. It has robbed the American people of the inestimable privilege of being exempt from the burden of enormous armaments under which other nations are groaning, by imposing, without the slightest necessity, similar burdens on our backs. ”

“ The dismemberment of the republic of Colombia and the slicing off from it of a territory which really has become a dependency of the United States serve to them as proof of our sinister schemes, and we must not be surprised if on occasion they should be more inclined to enter into a combination of foreign powers against us than a combination with us; and if in the matter of commerce their outraged feelings should move them, other things being equal, to trade with any other country more willingly than with the United States. ”

“ Indeed, we actually approached that realization when, in putting an end to Spanish rule in Cuba, we promised that Cuba should not be our conquest, but a self-governing republic, and when, in a great measure at least, we fulfilled that promise. The outside world, which had cynically doubted the sincerity of that promise, pricked up its ears and came very near believing that such an act on our part might really have been inspired by a generous, self-sacrificing desire to liberate another people from despotic rule, without any selfish scheme in the background. ”

“ There are no doubt many good citizens who think of voting for Roosevelt, having the legendary Roosevelt in mind; but they will do well to consider that, if elected, the real Roosevelt will be President. The legendary Roosevelt was he who not only abhorred and denounced immoral practices in the public concerns, but would never condone them or compromise with them; who from the bottom of his heart hated and despised spoils-politics and spoils politicians, party machines and party bosses ”

“ When a champion enters the lists with so proud a flourish of trumpets about his courage and “militant honesty,” it may well be hoped that he will boldly, and at some risk, undertake the task of using the best of his power to stem the growth of an evil which, unless checked, will become fatal to the very life of our democratic government. ”

“ If a nation shows that it knows how to act with decency in industrial and political matters, if it keeps order and pays its obligations, it need fear no interference from the United States. Brutal wrongdoing or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society may finally require intervention by some civilized nation, and in the Western Hemisphere the United States cannot ignore this duty, but it remains true that our interests and those of our southern neighbors are in reality identical. ”

“ Roosevelt is so unreasonable in itself, so adventurous, fraught with such arbitrary assumptions of power, with so many complications and with responsibilities so incalculable, that the statesmanship which proposes it may well be thought capable of any eccentricity ever so extravagant. ”

“ The party spirit which regards party success not merely as a means to a higher end, but as the end itself, and which puts abject obedience to party behest above the moral law and the dictates of conscience, will, if it prevails, inevitably destroy the vitality of free institutions.
Whatever induces people to look to the Government for favors to advance their material fortunes, instead of relying upon their own independent energies, will tend to deteriorate the popular character. ”

“ The boast that the great advances of this country in wealth and prosperity were owing to the Republican policy of high protection is simply a slander on the American people. Our natural resources are so immense and the energy and ingenuity of American labor so exceptionally productive, that owing to the combination of these two tremendous factors the American people were bound to prosper and to grow rapidly in wealth under—or in spite of—any economic policy. ”

“ What else is it than corruption in the grossest and largest form? What else than a system of government based upon corruption? John Bright, one of the warmest friends this Republic ever had in England, and one of the best of men, once wisely said: “There is nothing in public affairs that tends more to make men dishonest than the system of protection. ”