New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1871-08-12
THE PUBLIC DEBT or OUR CITY md
COUNTY.


We have esteemed and dear friends at the
South-goOd Republicans and thoroughly up
right men-who protest against our plain
speaking with regard to the carpet-bag thieves
who have doubled the debts and trebled the
taxes of several States. These friends think
that we are damaging the Republican party
and peIiliDg the election of ilSi2 by thus
speaking; we, on the other hand, insist that
we are taking the only course by which that
election can lie saved-thOugh We should take
it anyhow. You cannot march great army
across the flames of TOphet on a coat of white
wash If you attempt it, you will only get
into trouble, which you cannot escape by. blam-
ing those who forewarned you of fyour folly.
Not we who expose and denOunce the thieves,
but they who stole, are responsible for the
harm and shame which have befallen the Re-
publicans in the South and the only way to
save the party is to strip the thieves remorse-
lessly of every vestige of their abused power.
II you do MT think so, try the other tack, and
see where you fetch up.
AS with the. Republican thieves at the South,
so with their Democratic imitators in this City.
AS We wish the Democratic organization in
our State thoroughly beaten next November,
we shall be gratfed to see it shoulder the
Ta1nmany load and stagger through canvass
under it but we do MT believe it will do any
such thing. The pettifogging of the Demo-
cratic journals is only intended to break the
fall of the doomed ones. Messrs. Tweed and
Connolly, we judge, will resign or be removed;
whether any more are or are not MORALLY
wounded, we can better judge after we shall
have seen the last two years accounts, if we
ever do see them. The Controller and the
master-spirit of the old Board OF Supervisors
seem to us already past surgery.
To this conclusion it is nowise essential
that they shall have personally shared the
plumber of the City's treasury. That would, of
course, aggravatc their otfense; but it is suf-
ficiently fragrant at all events. 1t was their
chief duty, as exalted public functionaries, to
take care that the public funds be not stolen.
They were well paid to guard the treasury
against just such raids as those made in the
names of Ingersoll, Garvey, &c Say that they
did not know that the bills in question were
either mOnstrously exaggerated or wholly
fraudulent: it was their business to know;
and not knowing, in their position, was lnil-
deity TO a momentOus trust. There Is no
need of proving more than is already vlrtu-
ally confessed to make it clear that these two,
if no more, must go out. We strongly doubt
the inability of the City Government to stag
ger on till next November unless they do.
Large sums must be borrowed in some shape;
and who will lend them9 Echo answers,
"WhOT
The blunder most likely TO be made is that
of throwing Connolly alone overheard, in the
hope that this will suffice; but how can it
Every indication points to Tweed as the man
who put those monstrous bills through the
old Board of Supervisors, whereupon Hall and
Connolly Uhey say felt constrained also to
pass and 70 pay them. The excuse does not
exoucgatc them. bat it thoroughly inculpates