Carl Schurz is going to discuss current political questions tonight, in the German language, in Farwell Hall. One knows that he opposes the reelection of Grant. However, since the curious "Liberal" movement in Missouri that had the effect of making the Democrat Frank B. Blair, Mr. Schurz' colleague in Washington, there has been hope in Democratic circles that Schurz in order to fight Grant would completely bolt the Republican Party and then would be forced, by the political law of gravitation, to enter the Democratic Party. For this hope Schurz has given but little cause - not more than the Senators Summer and Trumbull. He vigorously opposed the immature and fantastic proposals of the President for the acquisition of San Domingo, as we and many good Republicans also did. He has advocated a reform of the civil service, just as we and very many good Republicans also advocate it. He has not fought the debasing sale of arms to France as energetically as all German Republican (and Democratic) papers did. He has voted with various other Republicans against the so-called Klu Klux Bill, and perhaps he would have voted with many other Republicans for a high tariff if one had been proposed. All that still does not make him a Democrat. It does not even prove that if Grant should again become the Republican nominee (which is still far from certain) he would not support his election.

That Schurz thought it possible last year to split the Republican Party by a union of a part of it with those Democrats who would honestly accept the results of the war, of that there can be no question. The Republican Party in 1855, had been formed in quite analogous fashion - namely, by a merger of a large part of the Whig Party and the liberal elements of the Democratic Party. But last year three essential factors were missing: First, the Republican Party in 1870, was not so hopelessly demoralized, as the Whig Party was, by the election of Franklin Pierce. Secondly, the Democratic Party did not contain in 1870, so many "liberal" elements that could be used in forming a new party. Thirdly, and most important of all, the program evolved in 1870, in Missouri did not by any means so appeal to the moral feeling and the imagination of the people as that designed after the Nebraska Bill. For the simple idea of freeing half a continent from the curse of slavery, millions can become enthusiastic without having first to study economics. But that the Union shall tax only the import of sugar, coffee, or spices, but not of hardward, cloth, or cotton - that - one may preach ever so persistently, and zealously, without arousing the slightest enthusiasm. And the same is true of the proposal to return the passive franchise to the few rebel leaders to whom the Constitution denies it.

....From his connection with the Westliche Post one may conclude that Schurz will not try to prevent the closing of the split in the Republican Party, and if this is so, than the Democrats who hope that Schurz, by his speech today, will win them recruits, will find themselves disappointed.