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high-minded, and, surely more and more, the victorious adversary of political corruption. [Applause.]
No doubt it is a great distinction that, within the practical restraints and difficulties which lofty ideals or standards impose upon any public career, Mr. Schurz should have been called to the high offices which he has filled. But vastly more difficult is it for a statesman, leaving behind him all official and formal power as a useful but no longer needed preparation or training, and by sole virtue of the faith which great masses of his fellow countrymen have come to repose in his wise and uttermost loyalty to the best interests of their and his country, to acquire through his own character and personality a permanent, great and fruitful power over public opinion. Few men are there to-day in the United States who, without official power or patronage, having no benefit to confer upon any man or class of their countrymen, which they do not offer all alike,—unselfishly lead and control a great body of enlightened public sentiment? When a statesman comes to this in a democratic land like ours, he reaches the first place in the true hierarchy of public power. There is nothing beyond. And this rare distinction belongs of right to Carl Schurz. I avow that it is to me, in its usefulness and nobility, chief of all the distinctions which even he has achieved. [Applause.]
Nor could this almost unique power have been exercised by Mr. Schurz more beneficently than in the long, somewhat tedious, but steadily gaining attack on the spoils system. [Applause.] It was surely a great service to attack the administrative inefficiency, extravagance and corruption, to which the spoils system every-
