The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1872-03-29

The eminent and worthy gentlemen who have
reformed New York, so far as to overthrow the
great Tammany Ring and drive the thieves
out of the Erie Opera House, have only done
part of their work. The HERALD, in the
judicious and generous support given to this
great popular movement, has all along argued
that reform meant something more than de-
struction. If this were reform then we have
paid large price for it. The gentlemen who
organized the Commune known as the Com
mittee of Seventy have interests in New York
of too grave and important nature to rest
content with the dethronement of Tweed and
the indictment of Mayor Hall. New York
is growing city. 1t has scarcely passed the
period Of dentition. Our Dutch ancestors
built wall from river to river across the
Trinity church meadows. calmly conscious
that there would be no city beyond their en-
bankment, and that they at least were secure
from the Indian depredatons. WE'LL they mis-
calculated the enterprise of their descendants,
as any curious observer may see who cares to
examine how much OF New York has been built
above Wall street. Two hundred years from
now New York will be to the New York of
to-day as the New York of to-day is to the
little settlement of Stuyvesant and his friends.
Our municipal statesmen will be truly
statesmen if they keep this steadily in view
1t is difficult to induce legislators to think Of
tomorrow. The gay and tickle Pompadour
was not the only human being whose philos-
ophy was After me the deluge!" That phi
losophy controls two-thrds of our legislation.
Appropriation bills are voted, salaries are
paid, mileage and so on duly provided, and
every thing else is political capital. Political
capital is never more effectively made than by
dealing frankly with the people. Politics is
trickery, and yet how little has ever been
done by trickery The ranting Cheap Jacks
who shout reform, economy, reduction Of tax
alton, and general atrophy of Improvement
and enterprise and progress, are always rated
at their true value. The people will always
rise in mutiny against men like Tweed and
Connolly, who served the city simply to plum
der it; but they will just as surely rise
| against the men who call for cessation of all
works Of Improvement. 1t was not the money
that was spent by Tammany, but the money
that was stolen, that vexed the popular heart.
If the Tammany leaders could have shown
that every dollar they received had
been honestly spent in the city SER
vice they would have been as strong as when
| the charter was passed. The leaders Of re-
form make mistake when they suppose that
the protest against Tammany was protest
against spending money. New York Graves
large and wise expenditure Of money. We
need a dock system that will make us the
rival of Liverpool. The commerce of the
seas is gradually flowing to our port, and we
must give it welcome. In time we shall have
steamers from all parts of the world The
Europe, and great steam packets will unload
at Harlem. We could well afford to pay fifty
millions of dollars to complete dock system.
And so with the boulevards. We want the
finest, most picturesque and attractive drives
that money can give us. No city is great
without its suburbs being beautiful, and
nature, in the way of hill and stream and
valley, has done as much for New York as for
any city in the world. So as to bridges. The
| East River should be spanned by as many
bridges as cover the Thames and the Seine,
and when this is done New York and Brook
| Ign will no longer be two rival cities, but one
great metropolis.
| A far greater evil, and what stands in the
way Of New York becoming great city, is an
evil that bears resemblance to absenteeism,
as was seen in France before the Revolution
| and as is now seen in Ireland. The sorest
grievance in the minds of the Jacquerie was
that the lords of the great chateaus drained
the peasantry of their means to spend lux
urious lives in Paris. AS France became
poor Paris became rich. Ireland groans
under the absentee system, by which noble
men exhaust the resources Of their Irish acres
to support palaces in England. On the other
hand, the English have their brief season in
London, and hurry back to their country seats
in Hants and Surrey and Devonshire to live
like lords OF the manor and spend their money
on the manor. In New York we have
system like that of which the French and the
Irish complained. All around New York we
have towns and cities whose wealth has been
| caiucu LULU, ohAy w NC SPouS eioeWueIe.
Brooklyn, Williamsburg, Hoboken, Jersey
City, are only so many emanations from New
York The city is only occupied by paupers
and mllionnaires No man with family
and earning moderate, fixed income, can live
in New York. Brooklyn has risen to be the
third city in the Union, city of wealth and
taste and beauty, because Of New York.
Over in New Jersey dozen towns have
sprung up in the same way. The
island is abandoned, because, while the
suburbs have been traversed BY RAILWAYS and