New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1873-08-08
TIE GOOD OF GROWLING.

Boston mas comparatively cheap uunlCi-
pal government To be sure, it spends a
| good deal of money, but then it has something
to show for the spending. The Aldermen of
the city are not above the well known dietetic
temptations of their place and class they are
| fond of iunkets at the public cost, and to
some extent the taxpayers do contribute to
the abdominal sesquipedalty of their rulers.
But they never do so willingly. They bleed,
SO to speak, under protest. Every voter
knows how to write read and cipher, and
when he thinks his taxes too large, he
sends an indignant statistical commune
cation to The Daily Advertiser or The
Post, which neither of these respectable sheets
cares to decline. The eyes of everybody are
kept wide open. Long Wharf calls to Bea-
con-st and Beacon-st., true to its traditions,
transmits the warning to all points of the
compass. The very cod-fishes would speak,
only they are split and sailed. The conse-
quence is that Boston, albeit of metropolitan
proportions, has all the advantages of Little
PedlingtOn. Mr.. Wendell Phillips taking his
morning walk, is detained for ten or for five
minutes by press of vehicles in Westinghouse
Does he acquiesceq Did this gentleman of the
pure Boston type ever acquiesce in anything I
Of course he makes speeches before the
Street Commissioners about the nuisance
of blockaded thoroughfares, and informs the
world what he would do if he were Mayor
Nor is his vigilance solitary. Everybody is
upon perpetual qui riue Of censorship. The
street railway companies are always in hot
water. The official street-cleaners brush and
shovel within an inch of their lives. The po-
lice do their duty because they know that if
they do not do it they will be pilloried in the
newspapers within twenty-four hours. The
firemen, if they fail in skill or in energy ex-
pect to be squirted to death by a cold stream
of public disapprobatiOn. Any attendant
at the Public Library will run his or
her legs off to find the desired novel for some
bread nd-butter schoolgirl while the Fed
eral Postmaster, with the great p. NJ. G.. to
back him up, will listen patiently to the COM
plants of the humblest Irishman who is indig-
nant or despairing because he has no letter
from Meath or Tipperary.
The truth is that in Boston, while traces of
the corruption Of the times are not wanting.
there is still left lively sense of the respon-
sibility of public servants to their constitu-
ents. They have still some faint notion there
of the governed If they catch an Alder
man stealing so much as six
pence, howl of indignation goes
ND from North End to South End,
and leaps like live thunder from the
hills of Roxbury to the hills of Dorchester.
Very few of the citizens are 80 rich or so
learned or so nobly descended or so fastidious
"a to be above taking an interest in municipal
politics, The most dyspeptic descendant of
some original settler, who gives you two fin
gers with demeanOr as frosty as if he had
lust come from Caucasus, will grow hot and
temporarily eupeptic over any small misman-
agement of the affairs of the city. Although
a millionaire, he is not in the least afraid of
being considered mean. Though up to
his eyes in private business, taking
care of his houses, collecting his
rents, serving as o director of the Atheneum
and as a deacon of his church, he remembers
the taxes and nobly does his duty as citizen.
If we could get men of the same class in
New-YOrk to be thus publicly active, the City
Hall and all the public Offices would be in
finitely more fragrant, our courts of Justice
would become tolerably clean, the rate of tax
alton would be diminished, and the taxes
when collected would go into the Treasury.
Other nice changes would be quick to follow,
so that within thirty days or three hundred
our most learned divines would be confidently
looking for the Millennium. We are good
deal bigger than BostOn-when shall we be as
methodcally moral or as portentously sharpl
as mindful of the rights of the humbest citi-
zen, a. careful of life, and as fastidious about
the public health, upon which life depends
A good specimen Of tho Boston Growl is