l
Garfield, and others, if there are other names honorable enough
to be mentioned along with these, stayed in the Republican
Party. They purified the administration. They accomplished
civil service reform. They helped to achieve the independence
of American manufacture. They kept the faith. They paid
the debt. They resumed specie payment. They maintained a
sound currency, amid great temptation and against great odds.
To this result our friends who were independent of party contributed
no jot or tittle.

Our system differs from that which prevails in England in
that it is hard to change the political power from one party
to another and hard to restore it when it is once lost. We
elect our President for four years. We elect our Senators
for six years. Therefore in determining whether it is your
duty to forsake a party which is wrong on some single question
you are to decide, first, whether that question is important
enough to warrant sacrificing every other measure in which
you agree with your party, and having every measure espoused
by the other which you think bad enacted if it get control.
Second, you have not only in such cases to sacrifice every
other thing you think desirable to prevent the one thing you
think undesirable, but you must decide whether, in regard
to that particular matter, the party you are asked to substitute
in power for your own will accomplish what you desire if it
get power. For example, there are some worthy Republicans
who are free-traders. But they agree with the Republican
Party in everything else. If you ask them to put a Democratic
President and Congress into power in order to get free trade
they must consider whether if they get power they will give
them free trade. Otherwise they sacrifice everything else
for that chance and get no benefit in that respect. The Republican
free-trader who voted for Mr. Cleveland in 1892 did not get
free trade. He got only what Mr. Cleveland denounced as
a measure of infamy. In the third place you have under our
Constitutional system to determine whether the chance to accomplish
what you want in regard to one measure warrants placing the
political power in hands you deem unfit, so that the party,
in your judgment right on one thing, but wrong in every other,
will have the fate of the country in its hands for a four
years' term, and deal with every new and unexpected question
as it shall think fit. I was bitterly reproached for supporti