in our politics, and there will always be need of them. Charles Sumner was such a man; and Carl Schurz is such a man.
It is my privilege to-night, in the name of this company, to present its thanks to Mr. Schurz for great and eminent services. We thank him that he has always been true to the two great political ideas which have ever been first in the hearts of the good people of this Commonwealth,—those, namely, of freedom and justice for all men, and of the sacred maintenance of public faith and credit. We thank him that when the West was honeycombed with the inflation heresy, his was the strongest and the clearest voice that pointed to the resumption of specie payments as demanded by every consideration of public safety and honor. And it has been his singular good fortune that upon this point, unlike many even of the wisest of our public men, he has had no occasion to revise or correct his opinions. They have stood the test of time; and he has lived to see general acquiescence in views of which at one time he, almost alone among Western statesmen, was the convinced and unhesitating advocate.
We thank him for having added lustre and renown to the administration of President Hayes,—an administration which, in purity and honesty of purpose, and in absolute freedom from scandals and corruption, has had no superior in American annals.
We thank him for his able and successful management of the vast and complicated concerns of
