New Orleans Republican. [volume] (New Orleans, La) 1867-1878, 1876-10-08

O0Ok6, COu0t6 00O OSS.COUut0 0voeJ "
| riety, high and low, grand or degraded.
have their constituents in New York.
Why, then, should not the thief Of the
century have his reception? Of course,
| it could but be by concurrence of the po-
lice or a general Jail delivery that an
attendance of the "worst men in New
York" could be counted on. In such case,
however, the attendance would be i'm
pressive. Under such circumstances of sus-
pended justice General Tweed might ap-
pear surrounded by his staff of Connolly,
Genet, etc., with others now exiles under
an inexorable law. His cortege and body
guard would be detailed from the State
prisons and his followers would succeed
in procession picking empty pockets and
imaginary locks in all the exuberance OF
professional pride. This honorary dis
tinction of supereminent fraud can not be
expected, but there will be many an
anxious heart that awaits the great Gen.
tennial rascal on his return to his own
dominion of official infamy. We can
not catalogue these troubled spirits. They
may, however, be classified. They will
consist chiefly of those Democrats who
have been for SO many years past per-
fectly cognizant of the frauds which
caused the passage of the law to prevent
and punish election frauds.
There are many, and among them per-
laps the most consistent followers of the
Van Buren,, Belmont, Wood and Tilden
school who fear that the sacri6cial Offering
of the Boss and his fortune, to propitiate
an outraged people may have e1asperated
their exiled political associates. They
fear, perhaps, that man sufficiently un-
scrupulous to debauch Legislatures and
defraud city may not be too good to
revenge himself by publishing batch Of
falsehoods against them. In the language
of the police courts, Tweed may split,
turn States evidence and bear false wit
ness against his political neighbors.
Tweed can not return in such triumph.
He will come back to his fellow-pris-
oners in the State prison shorn of wealth
and honors, to be clad anew in
penitential garments, as Cardinal Wolsey,
disgraced, retired to Leicester Abbey, an
old man, broken by the storms ''of prose-
cution and obloquy," who has "come to
lay his weary bones among ye."
The standard of political integrity in
New York is well known. 1t is account
ed venality elsewhere. 1t has been, I'M
happily. copied elsewhere, is spreading
over the Union and, unless arrested, will
destroy the form of government 1t is:
To the victors belong the spoils. 1t is
that all strategy is fair in war. Marcy
and Van Buren,, both New Workers, inau-
gura ted these doctrines. and Democracy
Endorsed and adopted them. The frauds
of Plaquemines parish were perpetrated
by New Yorker. They sought to con-
troll the result of an election by the man
ufacture Of votes enough to overcome an
antagonistic majority. 1t was fraud
identical with that by which, in 1868, the
votes of New York City were raised from
eighty to one hundred and twenty thou
sand, or enough to carry the State against
the votes of legal majority.
That those who with affected serenity,
but beating hearts, await the advent of
Tweed, believe it right to cheat at an
election, as a Comanche Indian does to
steal horse or lift scalp, We do not, for
an instant, doubt. The manufacture of
votes is with them an unconscious i'm
morality, but the world does not so re-
gard it. When, therefore, Tweed steams
up to New Yord harbor-unless the thief
takers transfer him to some private
craft-we may see such an assemblage
from curiosity, sympathy, and political
solicitude, as has never awaited any dis
tinguished arrival since the day when
Lafayette landed at Castle Garden.