CARL SCHURZ'S POLITICAL CAREER
dudes and Pharisees amounting to nothing’ when they happen to rise above his own party.” Under the inspiration of the occasion the orator pictured the possibility of welding the Independents with the Democrats into a permanent party organization. Though the Independents had supported “rather a cause and its champion than a party and its leader,” they did not, he declared, despise loyal attachment to a party. “They sincerely and highly appreciate and esteem organization in the service of principles, ideals and sound policies. But they distrust principles and ideals in the service of organization; and they condemn and despise organization without principles and ideals. If the Democratic party wishes to attach them firmly and loyally to its organization, it has only to attach itself firmly and faithfully to the principles, ideas and policies which attracted them.”
This conception of the meaning and purpose of party was in the long familiar vein of Mr. Schurz's philosophy; but it was altogether novel for him to suggest anything like permanent attachment to the Democracy. So far as the idea was more than a passing reflection of the occasion, it sprang from the hope that the old party was to be revolutionized through the leadership of Mr. Cleveland. To him the Independents gave ungrudging fealty. As Schurz said at the Reform Club dinner, addressing the President-elect: “Here you are among friends—friends who share not only one or two, but all the articles of your political faith, whether they touch constitutional principles, or the tariff, or the currency, or the reform of the public service; friends devoted heart and soul to the great cause you represent, and heart and soul devoted to you, because you honestly and courageously represent it.”
But in the events that crowded thick and fast upon the newly installed administration the hope of a triumphant Cleve-
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