Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/391

will stand above serious dispute, and of restoring confidence and repose to the popular mind. It is no wonder, that, some political circles excepted, the people should have welcomed it with such preponderance of sentiment as a measure of relief. By the agreement of the Conference Committee on that measure the situation has been entirely changed. The question is no longer whether the President of the Senate or the two houses of Congress shall determine the result, but whether this measure shall be accepted or rejected. I am convinced that the party undertaking to defeat this bill and to put in its place either the power of the President of the Senate to count and declare the vote, or the principle of the 22d rule, will sink to the bottom; and let me confess—for you want me to speak to you without reserve—I felt a pang when I saw it stated in the despatches, that telegrams coming from Ohio to Republican Congressmen advised opposition, and that Sherman, Garfield and others, generally assumed to be your particular friends and spokesmen, were going to try to defeat the bill. Whatever their views and wishes may have been before, now that a measure like this, agreed upon by the foremost men in the Senate and the House, is before Congress and the country, with that popular support which springs from a general demand for a just and impartial decision, your friends ought to understand that you cannot afford, even by implication, to appear hostile to this settlement;—just as, by the way, they ought to have understood, when at New Orleans, that as your friends it was their imperative duty to insist with all the influence at their disposal upon the appointment of a Democratic member of the returning-board, according to statute of the State, so as to take away from the proceedings of that board their exclusive and therefore so suspicious partisan character. If the Conference bill should fail by Republican