The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1872-02-01

Mean Destruction.
Our New York Commune seems doomed to
an existence as inglorious, if not as bloody, as
its forerunner, the Commune of Paris. When
the Committee of Seventy arose in a night,
proclaimed into being by public cutlery from
the platform of town hall, and the Cheap
Jack newspapers and their followers raised the
chorus that the millennium had really come,
and we were to have no more stealing, no
more repeating at elections, no more fraudu-
lent registrations, no more elevation of bad
men TO Office, the HERALD said that there was
no logical purpose in the movement; that it
was only phase of Communism, and that the
Committee of Seventy would live it's ninety
days and dissolve into mist and thin air, and
we should be precisely where we were
at the outset. Even now the prediction has
been verified
Where is the Committee of Seventy The
men who called it into life have gained their
purpose. Reform meant their own selection
and election to office. This gained they have
subsidized. AS to the committee 1t is an old
story, another phase of good Peter Cooper's
'Ctizeas' Association" which ran into half
dozen Offices for its half dozen managers.
We have had these respectable mobs periodi-
cally. Citizens neglect their duties at pri-
mary elections and at the polls; evil-minded,
ambitious men creep into power and plumber the
Treasury; we 60 from bad to worse. and sud-
denly there is ''revival," as the churchmen
would call it. Citizens feel they have been
remiss and undergo a quickening sense of their
political sins. Old gentlemen with gold-headed
canes leave their whist and cosy suppers at
the club aud hurry out to ward assem-
blies and mass meetings, and listen sleepily
to sparkling declarations about the neces-
sity of reform and the days of Brutus,
and how much we have lost since the
good old times of the Revolution-'good old
times" be 1t remembered, when people were
as bad as they ore now, if we can believe
Freneau and Cobbett and Duane. A dozen
theories are advanced as containing the only
solution, the true panacea for all the ills of
the body polite. One blames the Pope for the
sons, third the democratic party, fourth
the radicals. In time bevy of shrewd poll
ticians who ave been members Of machines"
and "rings" all their lives, come to the front,
and the whole movement is resolved into
political party as eager and false and rapa-
cious as the one antagonized. and quite as
camorous for Office. The old men-gold-
headed canes and all--are elbowed out Of the
way, and we have the same condition of affairs
that was seen before. ''Rcform" is simply
an Appian Way to power, and nothing more.
So IL was, as all men remember, with this
Old Citizen Association! So with the Com
mittee of Seventy or Ninety Owe forget the
number) which arose in Brooklyn, and has
now been absorbed by the Kings county
Ring. Our Committee of Seventy was an
noisy mass meeting, without authority,
law or responsibility claiming to rule New
/! York even as the Commune ruled Paris. What
has it done beyond advertising few unim-
portant aud starving Cheap Jack newspapers,
who took up reform as business, just as they
had followed the Ring as business, as long as
the bills were paid? We were told Connolly and
Tweed were to be imprisoned yet Connolly
lives in splendid seclusion and Tweed is
about to sit in the Senate. We were to have q
general impeachment of the judges, and yet no
Judge has been disturbed. We were to have
a new, absolutely safe charter. with oil the
patented improvements; model charter, at
last, that would realize our hopes of free gov
ernment; yet oil we have seen Is an occa-
sional tinkers expedient In the way of bill
| to amend the old charter. Instead of q new,
clean, sound vessel, we are to have simply a
| have a reformed Board of Aldermen and
Councilman, which begins its career by an
intrigue. We have James O'Brien instead
of William M. Tweed, and John Cochrane
| in the place Of Henry Smith. The men
who follow O'Brien and Cochrane are the men
would follow them tomorrow if they were In
power. A few Of the leaders of the Ring have
RETIRED but the Ring is still unmoved, and
controls ne-tenths Of the Offices OF honor and
emolument. One material change, to be sure,
is that Cheap Jack has no trade in the Ole
| Hnc-nO one 10 piy Ills weary, surice-tou
stories about corruption; no one to cheer after
his cart as before So he has taken TO abuse
Charles OConor! The Mayor was to be hurled
into the darkness that envelops Lucifer but hi
sits in his curule chair, and has authority, ant
finds reformers enough willing to have his name
on their commissions, and will probably remain
until his term is over, and win new one /
he cares. In truth, more real reforms have
} come from the much-abused Mayor than from
any one else, and it would not surprise us to SCI