The San Francisco call., 1898-10-19
PHELaN's WATER RATE DIVERSION.

THF case of Fitch vs the Board of Supervisors,
 which filled so large a space in the public eye
 about this time last year, having been decided by the Supreme Court in favor of the officials whom Mayor Phelan busted from office, it will be interesting to observe the comment Of our reform Democratic fellow citizens upon the reasoning ot the Judges. An evening contemporary remarks that the scheme to oust the Supervisors for failing to fix water rates in February I8o7 was an attempt to Mexcanize the city government By this it is intmated that the Mayor endeavored to change the local government without resorting to the formality of election.
 If 1t be true alleged that the Mayor actually did contemplate Mexicanizng the city he must have been acting under the advice of his esteemed Mexican teI- low citizen, Barclay Henley, now his candidate for District Attorney Mr. Henley, as is well known, was formerly Mexican Marquis, and is therefore prob ably familiar with the Mexican method of overturn- irg governments.
 The decision of the Supreme Court, however will not be likely to promote the political aspirations of Mayor Phelan. On the contrary, those who take the trouble to read will perceive that between the lines it administers deadly blow to the species of dema gogy upon which he has been making politics in this city, and by means of which he has hoped to lift himself into the Lord -Mayoralty under the char ter The court declares that proceedings for busting officials for derelicton of duty under law must be criminal in their nature that no crime was con- mitted by the Supervisors in making water rate in vestgation which the month of February and that if valid water ordinance can be passed in any other month-which the court has already decided could be done-when the constitution declares that rates shall be fixed in February that pro- ceedings shall be commenced in that month
 The monstrous feature of Mayor Phelan's theory of fixing rates under the constitution and the act of 1884, however receives little attention from the court perhaps because 1t not necessary to slider it. Reference is made to his idea that innocent Supervisors must be punished along with the guilty for nafeasance in office. It will be remembered that Lackmann and Rottanzi opposed laying the dinance of 1897. They protested against Dr. Cln- tons motion to postpone and declared that if adopted it might endanger their official tenure Yet when the proceedings to oust the board along they were included among the guilty and Judge Wallace held that they must also be punished by being deprived of their offices
 Subsequently the Mayor reapponted them, but the precedent he sought to establish clear This pre- cedent was that innocent must be punished in order that the guilty might be reached-a principle so abhorrent to all justice to approach perlously near barbarism. The purpose of Phelan and Fitch in adopting this theory was, however, ill-conceaed They were. forced to save Supervisors Clinton and Dodge who had been chiefly instrumental in post ponng the fixing of rates and they busted the board as an entirety to do it. Then Phelan to the occasion by appointing the four anti-Spring Val ley Supervisors to his board.
 Now that the Mayor and his assistants in this scheme to obtain possession of the government by force are on record pack of fools, the people should not fail on November 8 to express their opinion of all of them who running for office