New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1870-06-02
DURIJC OPINION

"There must be something rotten" said The
| London Spectator the other day, commenting
upon the operations of Mr.. James Fisk, ir,
" not only in the organization of the Govern
"ment of New-York, but in the public opinion
"upOn which that organization depends" On
the whole we are not surprised at The Spcctd-
tors conclusion. Life in London is by no
means immaculate, as we very well know.
The fine art of swindling has been cultivated
in the British metropolis to point of perfec-
ton which we as yet only see afar off. But
we must do our English cousins the justice to
say that they have never yet made swindling
a respectable profession, and that while we are
steadily sinking lower and lower i'll public
morality their community is now and then
shaken if not purified by reactionary spasms
of offended virtue. 1t is only the other day that
certain gentlemen of aristOcratic connections
received felon's sentence for corrupt practices
at elections, and a London joint stock com
papy, with an Earl for its President, and we
know not how many honOrables among its di-
rectOrs, is now before the police-cOurt, On a
charge of conspiracy to defraud. If it were
possible to imagine the Erie Railway directors
capable of fraudulent transactions; if it were
conceivable that any number of temptations
would lead Mr.. James Fisk or Mr.. Jay Gould
astray from the path of rectitude in which
they have stepped for so many years; if we
could picture to ourselves those eminent citi-
zens destroying for personal gain the value of
property they were appointed to guard for
others,-if these highly improbable con-
ditiOns should be fulfilled, is it
within the range of imaginable events
that the offenders should be brought to JUS
tice in a New-York court? When The Spec
tdtOr learns the particulars of our last State
election it will be confirmed, we fear, IN the
opinion we have quoted at the head of this
article. If that election is to be taken as a
deliberate expression of the popular sentiment,
it will be fair to infer that the alliance be-
tween the financial Ring of Mr.. Fisk and the
political Ring of Mr.. Tweed has the full 'ap-
proval of the voters of New York; that the
shameful and notorious relations between the
freebOOting barOns of Erie and the courts to
which we ought to look for protection against
their speculative operations are not thought
deserving of even mild rebuke.
We may admit at once that in certain
sense The Spectator is right. There is some
thing unhealthy in the public opinion which
supports government like that Of the City of
New-YOrk. There is something unhealthy in
the public opinion which suffers fragrant dis
honesty to go unrebuked, which tolerates
newspaper organs published in the interest of
notorious rascals, which allows venal judges to
escape social ostracism, and is not even aroused
by open assaults upon the suffrage, the very
foundation of our whole system of government
But NewYOrk is not fair sample of the rest
of the country The mptrOnOlis ia the
sink which receives the overflow of
Europe and retains the sediment while the
better part of the food is drained away into
the West. OF the vast immigration to this
port we retain nearly all that is bad and only
a small proportion of the good. From this
mixed foreign element the Thugs of Erie, the
Pretorian cohorts of the City Hall, the suffers
of ballot-bOxes. the Tammany repeaters, tho