The Sun.
London, England, 1870-04-27 00:00:00

charged by Fernando Wood with misappropriating
the funds of the Freedmen's Bureau. Congress is
very " fussy" over its investigation business, as if
the members desired to persuade the nation of their
honesty by proceeding against lobbyists. I may
add that there is no man whose affairs require more
investigating than those of Gen. Butler himself. He
is deep in a scheme to remove Gen. Andrews of
Massachusetts, and he is bringing a ereat pressure
to bear on the President with this object, but the
plot is not at all relished in Massachusetts. 'I here
is a curious rumour floating ab Jut from St. Peters-
burg, that Mr. Burlingame was poisoned by his
Chinese associates. It is na.ural that such re-
ports should be circulated, but their untruth is
thoroughly well known, as well as the loyalty
towards li"in of all his Chinese associates. Mr.
M'Leary Brown has peen accredited by the Chi-
nese Government as his successor. The President
before leaving for Troy signed the bill for the erec-
tion of a bridge across the Delaware River, between
Philadelphia and Camden. The St. Louis bridge is
to be finished by Oct. 1, 1871, the contract for its con-
struction being taken by the Key Stone Company of
Pittsburgh at $1,500,000, being well within the esti-
mate. The Loudon bankers, J. S. Morgan and C 0..,
took up two and a half million dollars of the Bonds,
with the option of taking the rest of the four millions
within thirty days ; and $1,200,000 have been paid
in by the American stockholders, so that that great
work is now secured beyond peradventure. A hear-
ing before Chief Justice Howe was to be given on
Saturday to a notice applying for a receiver for the
Union Pacific Railroad by Wyoming creditors for
$1,000,000, and the bill affirms vast frauds in the
construction of the line. The House Pacific Railroad
Committee have heard arguments from the counsel
of General Fremont in support of the Memphis and
El Paso Radroad Bill, to which there is great oppo-
sition in both Houses, though the General and his
friends appear confident of success. The Commit-
tee on Naval Affairs have agreed to report favour-
ably the bill granting the officers and men of the
Kearsarge one hundred and ninety thousand dollars
for the destruction of the Alabama. Commissioner
Delano has forbidden the publication of the annual
lists and income returns of taxpayers, believing it
to be objectionable and offensive, and not for the
interests of the Government. The Committee on
Post-offices desire to be relieved from considering
the bills for subsidizing steamship lines, as they
consider it to be rather the duty of the Committee
on Commerce. During the debate in the Senate
on the Income-tax Mr. Delano sat next Senator
Sherman. That gentleman called up the joint re-
solution, but the Finance Committee concluded to
postpone the subject of the revival of that objection-
able tax until the general tax bill comes up, merely
declaring that it shall be collected on offi•
cial salaries, and dividends or interest paid
by corporations during 1870. Mr. Sherman then
announced that the Finance Committee would re-
commend the extension of the income tax for seve-
ral years, and though the first resolution had been .
received in silence, this called forth protests from
all sides, and it is evident that the Finance Com-
mittee will get little support for such a proposition.
Mr. Conkling doubted the constitutionality of the
tax, and Mr. Sumner pronounced it to be the most
odious of the taxes called for in war time. Mr.
Sberman, however, asserted that when the time
arrived he would prove it to be the most equitable
of all taxes. Venezuela is to be coerced into the
payment of some claims by American citizens ; at
least the Foreign Affairs Committee advise the use
of the Army and Navy by the President for the
purpose ; but Venezuela wants to be annexed.
Commander L. A. Beardslee is detached from the
Hydrographic Office, and ordered to take command
of the Palos, which is to proceed from Boston to
China, through the Isthmus of Suez.

THE MUNICIPAL CHARTER OF NEW
YOB,K AND THE ELECTION LAW.

A correspondent of the ,Standard has painted a
droll picture of Mr. Horace Greeley, of the Tribune,
and Mr. John Morrissey, M.C., discussing, over a
lunch at Delrnonico's, the municipal administration
of ew York City. He says The philanthro-
pist and prizefighter, the vegetarian teetotaller and
the bon vivant, the moral reformer and the faro
dealer, sat down together, and Morrissey so worked
upon Greeley that the Tribune came out the next
morning adversely to the passage of the Charter in
the Senate." The New York Herald has a still more
comic sketch of the scene at Delmonico's :---
"They were remarkable heads that thus came together
Heads, indeed, of strange variety, viewed in any aspect,
whether moral, intellectual, physical, or tonsorial. On
Morrissey, fate has 'put a head ' fit for Hercules, the ex
pression of which is all hard force; on Greeley, one that
is all softness, like a pippin in December. On Morrissey,
the jetty, Jove-like curls come down to the very brows,
leaving no forehead, as there was no need for any ; and on
Greeley the scant hair, to which nature in her economy
gave no colour, parts away from a wild waste of fore-
head, eloquent of brain run to seed. Morrissey's head
is indebted to art for the greater part of its heroic style
•—partly to the art tonsorial, partly to the art that is
for pre-eminenca distinguished as 'the manly art.' Gree-
ley's head is as simple and unwashed a piece of nature as
ever came out of a turnip field. Behold, then, the many
differences in the two heads; and not less different than
the heads thus brought together by the force of events are
the characters of the men who came with them. One of
them is a great moralist, who preaches without stint and
with almost savage invective and doctrines of plain,
straightforward honesty; who cannot indulge himself
with even Christian patience for rogues, but who, with all
his abstract love of honesty, is so charmingly and eccen-
trically ignorant of the ways of the world that he believes
faro to be au innocent little game that children play in the
Sunday schools. He is a philosopher who has all the true
philosophic love of virtue in the abstract, but who does not
believe practically that it makes any difference whether a
man is honest or dishonest does not believe that virtue
forfeits her character in coming to terms with vice.
Finally, he is a great politician, who can be fooled to the
uses and intrigues of a prize-fighter through the vanity of
his personal importance."

This remarkable meeting has been seized on by
moralists of all classes as a theme on which to
descant; the man whose life has been devoted to
inculcating lessons. of virtue to find himself at last
exactly on the same level with the one whose exploit*,
have been in the prize ring and in the gambling
hell; but Mr. Greeley's enemies have not confined
themselves to this, for some endeavoured to prove
that the two are more on a par in morality than
the public believe. The Evening Post asserts that
though Mr. Greeley was despatched to Albany as
one of the fifteen delegates to the Union League
Club, " his sympathies were with Tweed rather
than with the citizens whose spokesman he was"
—that his course was ' wavering and uncertain'—
that he does not agree with the League'—that his
conduct was simply a fraud, a dishonourable deser-
tion of a clearly implied duty ; a gross breach of
trust." All manner of rumours were soon in circu-
lation regarding the gigantic job said to have been
perpetrated, whereby the Government of the city was
sold to W. M. Tweed and Peter B. Sweeny by an
alliance of the Republicans with Tammany Demo-
crats against the Young Democracy, one of whose
leaders, as we before explained, is Morrissey. ,
1, he
Member of Congress showed Mr. Greeley that Tam-
many had used him as a cat's-paw ; that. each
• Re-
publican Member had received $lO,OOO for voting
for the New Charter, though ostensibly the vote was
given on the compact that the Democrats should
assist in passing a stringent election law. The
New Charter has been passed, and the rule of
Tweed and Sweeny has been fully established and
confirmed. Sheriff O'Brien, Morrissey, and the
rest, have been thoroughly defeated, and New
York seems to look on with a grim complacency,
for, in the hands of Tweed and Sweeny, they know
the worst, while in the hands of the Young De-
mocracy they do not know what must happen.
That each successive ring exceeds in rapacity, in
audacity, and in ingenuity its predecesor has been
proved by the state of things which now prevails,
and they would indeed be sanguine men who anti-
cipated any improvement at the hands of the young
Democracy. Tweed is like a great king, whose
wealth is enormous, and whose sway is now absolute,
and, in an American sense, permanent ; therefore,
he cannot escape such a responsibility for the go-
vernment of the city as may even influence a
Tammany Hall politician. The S'tandard's corre-
spondent naively says, "Should the Cba ter pass,
the most populous and opulent city in America will
be in the hands of an unprincipled 'ring,' who
will administer its affairs to swell their already
enormous wealth." As if that populous and wealthy
city had not been the prey of such organizations as
long as this generation can remember. The Tribune
of the 6th inst. plaintively asserts its disbelief in
voting for a bad law, on a compact that others will
vote for a good one. It considers a stringent elec-
tion law to be a necessity, and the one passed to be
good ; but it would not in payment hand over the
city to the Tammany ring for an indefinite period,
The Tribune is not usually slow in as,erting bribery
and corruption as the moving springs of those who
do what it disapproves, and it is openly stated that
the Republicans who voted for 't'weed's Charter