The Sunday tatler and Jersey City express. (Jersey City, N.J.) 1883-1886, 1886-04-25
The Layerty Verdict.

The TATTLER has insisted from the
commencement of the Laverty impeach-
ment trial that the cause of justice was
safe in the hands of the Senators repres-
enting the twenty-one county constitu-
encies in the State. We believed that
jury of such exceptional intelligence and
character would not violate their con-
sciences and their oaths by consigning the
respondent to living death, for the one
and only reason that he happened 10 be a
political opponent. The possibility of
such brutal cruelty seemed to our minds,
as we looked around the august body that
sat in judgment upon him. entirely out OF
the question. We acknowledge our error.
The Senators viewed him as Democrat,
identified with the most active d sggres-
sive wing of the party, and draw The line
at that. Never, in the history II he State,
has closer political division been made
by the Senate upon any pending question
Mr.. Laverty was condemned, not only by
the votes of the Republican Senators be-
cause he was guilty of the crime of being
a Democrat, but with the aid of the vote
of Senator representing wing of the
Democracy that is more bitter against the
wing of the party with which Mr.. Laverty
has been identified than ever Republican
was against Democrat. Therefore it is
that we say that political division on a
pending public question was never closer
than in the making up of the unrighteous
judgment with which the Senate on We'd
nesday last overwhelmed the late Keeper
and his family. The verdict reflected not
only the antagonism of Republican against
Democrat, but all the elements in the
Democracy itself adverse to the particular
interests Dir. Laverty was supposed to
have tied himself to. This view of the
villainous partisanship of The verdict is
emphasized by the character of the verdict
itself. 1t is an absurd paradox The con
viction put the unsupported testimony of
Minnie Schaffer, prison strumpet and
thief and characterless bastard herself,
against the reputation Mr.. Laverly had
built up in forty years, against his denial,
against the sworn testimony of the most
skilful physicians in the country, that he
was incapable, if he had the disposition,
of committing the crimes she charges
upon him. and against all the probabili-
ties of the case. We say unsupported
testimony, and we use the term s'unsup-
ported" with full knowledge of its inn
port. The confederation of her testimony
was supplied by the oaths of other prison
strumpets, who were put in the witness
box during the trial. Outside of their
statements not word was adduced that
went to the support Of her story. But
they charged Mr.. Layerty with lewd in
timacies with themselves. The Senate,
in acqmtting him of their charges, prac.i-
cally declared that they had periured
Themselves in that respect and so destroy
ed the value OF their evidence in all other
points to which they testified. In thus
throwing out the testimony of every cor
roborating witness, they rest their case
upon Minnie Skaters evidence alone.
They hold this woman Of sin and shame
and degradation, who has not drawn an
honest breath since her early childhood,
and who at twenty-five has seen the in
side Of several prisons, up to the gaze of
the astonished people as the only angel of
LIGHT among the hundred or moro f,f VII