Litchfield enquirer., 1878-04-18
A Warning.

Tweed is dead at last. The greatest thie1
 of American history has gone to his final ac.
 count. Yet his career is one that is warning
 not only to rascals but to honest men, Hii
 wonderful and apparently unaccountable sue.
 cess, for series of years, points to the great
 est danger from universal suffrage that our pc
 litical history has yet developed. Was it be-
 cause Tweed so cunningly concealed his rob-
 berries that he was able to cheat justice and steal millions Nothing of the kind. The ras. calities of the Ring were more than suspected they were repeatedly exposed-and yet their power remained supreme over the city they plundered. Tweed in the meantime was in- solently sneering at reform. Suppose Ido steal, said he in effect, ''What are you going to do about it ?" He had control of the Democratic machine; he had the good will of the mass of voters who pay no taxes, to whom he furnish ed work at high rates, and whose pressing wants he relieved by liberal use of public funds. There is reason to believe, also, that he won the favor of many of the very rich, by partial remissions of their just taxes Property owners at last came to see the inevitable ruin to which his practices would lead. Honest Democrats rebelled against his leadership of their party. Positive evidence of his robberies was secured and published in detail By a herculean effort the Ring was defeated at the polls, and it's chief members prosecuted and driven into exile. For once honesty was tri- umphant and property safe.
 Indeed the fact may be taken as thorougly established that mere rascality cannot rule even in the demoralization of our largest cities where property owners are in clear minority. The majority who own no property will not stand by the selfish plunderers who themselves ab- sorb all, or nearly all, the booty they take. But let us suppose sincere Communists in the place Tweed and his confederates formerly held-men honest enough not to steal a dollar for themselves, but shrewd enough to take ad- vantage of the municipal powers they control to coniscate, by onerous taxation, the incomes of the rich for division, in the name of charity, among the poor Could such men be beaten at the polls, and ruinedinthe courts, as were the mere thieves of the Ring This is a question it will be we'll for the men who neglect all civic du ties, and who devote their whole lives to the accumulation of property, to consider. The time may come when the ounter-accumulation of poverty and crime and wretchedness, realiz- ing at last it's full political strength, and led by honest fanatics sea green incorruptibles'' like Robespierre-w turn upon the wealthy minority and destroy or divide their property, as the people of France destroyed or divided the property of it's clergy and nobility in the Great Revolution. Let the Vanderbits and Astors and Stewards of New York remember that the verdict of history is that the populace of France was more sinned against than sin ning that the destruction they wrought was productive in the end of more good than evil and that if the urban society of America breeds thieves and paupers and savages in excess of honest and industrious citizens it will deserve the destruction that surely awaits it.