The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1872-02-21
The Seventy's Charter Experimcu:-The
Committee MT Cooper Institute.

Committee Mt Cooper Institute.
There was good attendance OF the Com
mittee of Seventy and their friends at the
Cooper Institute last night, to hear what the
advocates of the experimental charter had to
say in its favor. Several speeches were made,
in many of which the orators fought over
again the battle decided in the last
election, and said little or nothing about
the charter that is to give US as
many votes as a cat is reputed to have lives,
and to supply us with city government in
which every political organization, clique and
faction is to have representation. Messrs.
Solomons and Stems, the champions of the
theory of cumulative voting and minority rep
resentation, were, of course, eloquent in its
favor; but as a general thing the speakers
fought shy of the question. No one explained
how the little difficulty of the constitutional
objection was to be disposed of or attempted to
prove the advantages of having mixed COM
missions at the heads of all the city depart
ments, some elected by one power and some
by another, with no direct responsibility any
where and no direct authority vested in Legis-
lature or Executive. There was no argument
to prove, for instance, how greatly the
despatch of business would be facilitated in
the Department of Finance by associat-
ing four Commissioners or sub Comptrollers
with the acting Comptroller in the
management of our financial affairs. Yet
few words from Comptroller Green, who has
~,
| financial middle. would have been both inter-
esting and instructive on this point. Singu-
larly enough, it did not occur to any orator to
cite the well-known honesty and efficiency of
our old, politically balanced Board of Super
visors, or the incorruptible and honor
able character Of the bygone metro
politan and Tammany mixed commits
sions, in which democrats and republicans
have been sandwiched together as precedents
to prove how admirably the proposed munich
pal hodge-poge of cumulative voting and
minority representation may be expected to
work. We were told how grand and glorious
thing it would be for every sore-headed pol
itician and dissatisfied conventionist to possess
the power of turning his boiling proclivi-
ties to practical advantage through the
means of the legalized repeating con-
templated in the experimental charter I;
but all were not informed how the citizens
were to be protected against chickering's, bar
gains and conspiracies after these conflicting
elements shall have been drawn together in a
, happy family of minority representation over
every department in the city government as
well as in the Board of Aldermen.
The meeting last night, so far as the public
sentiment of the city is claimed to have been
made manifest at it, was a mere sham. The
State Legislature would fall into error should
1t regard 1t as any indication of the desire
OF the citizens Of New York to be sub
jected to the singular experiment proposed in
the Stern and Solomon charter. What our
people really demand and really need is a
strong, centralized, responsible and simple
government, and the sooner the Legislature
gives us one, protected by a sound and efficient
election law, the better. The population and