Harper's Weekly Editorials on Carl Schurz/Abusing the Plaintiff's Attorney

by Harper's Weekly

ABUSING THE PLAINTIFF'S ATTORNEY.

If Senator Morton really feels the profound contempt for experience which he expresses, the country has been greatly mistaken in supposing him to be a sagacious statesman. Senator Schurz makes a masterly exposition of the consequences that have always followed inflation under the circumstances in which this country is now placed. He shows further the principles which have produced and must always produce this result. He refutes statements based upon a superficial resemblance in the situation of different countries, and presents the actual facts of their condition. He exposes relentlessly the sophistries about the currency with which the air fairly hums, and declares that in his opinion the popular feeling is hostile to inflation. And, in reply, Mr. Morton — for he really compels us to say so — resorts to tactics to which he has condescended before, and merely abuses the plaintiff's attorney. He said that he could not attempt to answer off-hand a carefully prepared speech — which was a very good reason for not speaking off-hand. But he went on to say that the cheapest of political learning was that obtained from cramming; that he had known people to cram for the stump upon three or four old speeches; that many things were true in Europe that were not true here; that Mr. Schurz was ignorant of the country in which he lived, but was what is called in France a political littérateur; that he was not the only man who had read all the books; that he talked about China, a country that was finished and walled up a thousand years ago, and that this country would soon be finished also if his doctrines should prevail.

The object of this outburst is plain. Mr. Morton was conscious that the facts and arguments of Mr. Schurz's speech had impressed the Senate, and would impress the country. He could not answer the arguments nor deny the facts, but he might try to break their force by ridiculing their author and appealing to prejudices. Mr. Schurz was German born, and he was a student, and he had led a schism in the Republican party; so Mr. Morton “went for him” as a professor and a pedant, a littérateur and a doctrinaire, who had read books, but knew nothing of practical affairs, and who, upon the whole, was rather an impudent fellow to lecture the American Senate so loftily. It was the only course left to Mr. Morton, if, having nothing to say, as he stated, he was still resolved to speak.

But, as a statesman and a practical man he must be aware that he seriously weakens his influence and his standing among sensible men by so contemptuously flouting experience and the result of the wisest observation and thought. If, as he says, he has read all the books, he knows that, so far as the fundamental facts are concerned, there is no essential difference between the situation of this country and that of all other commercial and manufacturing countries with an irredeemable currency. From the same sources, also, he must know that no argument for inflation has been advanced in Congress which has not been more powerfully urged in Parliament and elsewhere, and utterly refuted by the most trained practical sagacity. Again, while denouncing theorists, he knows, of course, “from the books” that the theorist Adam Smith has influenced the prosperity of England more than any other man, and that it was the Manchester theorists who converted that eminent practical statesman, Sir Robert Peel, and persuaded him to the best act of his public career. The world is ruled by thinkers, who are always denounced as theorists, and legislation is really practical and beneficial only so far as it conforms to the conclusions of thought and observation. The point upon which Mr. Morton and the inflationists constantly insist, but which, as yet, they have failed to prove, is the essential difference in the present financial situation of this country from similar situations in all other countries.

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