Distributed as that element was, however, with its vote
localized under our law, unwritten as well as statutory, there was no
possibility of any constituency so concentrating itself that Carl Schurz
could be kept in the position where he could continue to render services
of the greatest possible value to the country. I, therefore, confidently
here submit a doubt whether human ingenuity could devise any system
calculated to lead to a greater waste of parliamentary ability, or more
effectually keep from the front and position of influence that
legislative superiority which was the arm of Aristotle to secure.
"Cant-patriotism," as your Francis Lieber termed it; and, on this
score, he waxed eloquent. "Do we not live in a world of cant," he wrote
from Columbia here to a friend at the North seventy-five years ago,
"that cant-patriotism which plumes itself in selecting men from within
the State confines only. The truer a nation is, the more essentially it
is elevated, the more it disregards petty considerations, and takes the
true and the good from whatever quarter it may come. Look at history and
you find the proof. Look around you, where you are, and you find it
now." And, were Lieber living to-day, he would find a striking
exemplification of the consequences of a total and systematic disregard
of this elementary proposition in studying the United States Senate from
and through its reporters' gallery.
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