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long as the present. district-resident representation lasts just so long will we be disfranchised in all but the name, and men like Mr. Schurz, whether in the nation or in the city, be excluded from continuous public life. No public man of independent character and lofty public motives ever was, or will be, in perpetual harmony with the political majority of the neighborhood in which he lives. So long as, in America, the rule holds that he must be, American public life will be handicapped. From this cause it has suffered; it is now suffering greatly; it will continue more and more to suffer; for, no matter how rich it is in other respects, no nation can afford to be wasteful of experience, capacity and character in its public men.
It has of late been somewhat boastfully claimed that the American people have never yet failed to solve any problem with which they have been called upon seriously to grapple. That, as an abstract proposition, I do not care to discuss; but, nevertheless, to me at least, this occasion suggests the problem I stated when I began to address you—a problem still unsolved, which might well be commended to the earnest attention of that same American people, of whom we are a part. Our presence here proves—nothing could more conclusively prove it—the existence of a constituency, and a constituency not below the average as respects intelligence, means or character. Mr. Schurz—of that, too, our being here gives proof—should have been—should now be our representative. What sort of political machinery, I then ask, is that which, for a quarter of a century, has kept that representative and this constituency apart? And, too, has kept them so thor-
