New-York tribune., 1901-10-10
A LIGHTNING CHANGE.

Consistency is said to be the virtue of small
minds If the reciprocal proposition that incon-
sistency is the mark of great minds be true MI.
Edward NJ. Shepard must be a whole Hall OF
Fame personiied. A public man will naturally
In the course OF years change his opinions; IN
the heat of debate he may say things whlch
afterward look queer; politics proverplahy
makes strange bedfellows. 1t Is not commonly
expected. however. all allowances being made
for transformation Of views and change OF cir
cumstances. that an intelligent man of middle
age long settled principles and great preten-
sions to high political morality will suddenly in
the twinkling of an eye abandon what he has
vehemently through many years proclaimed not
as mere counsels Of expediency, but as immu-
table principles OF right conduct. When that
abandonment is made at a moment when his
own political ambition promises to be promoted
thereby he cannot wonder II people attribute
the circumstance not so much to coincidence as
TO cause and effect For our part we prefer to
believe that Mr.. Shepard is honest, and has
been wofulIy deluded into making himself the
victim of the sophistical reasoning with which
he tries to explain to the public the proprlety
of his helping to vindicate and continue In
power the organization whose career he has
said was 'the most burning and disgraceful blot
upon the municipal history OF this country"
1lere is a point Ol lucobSlsteHCs. Ho"c'ci' az
which even a man OF honest intention becomes
utterly unworthy OF trust, and Mr.. Shepard mas
reached that limit
On December IS. 1900, less than ten months
ago. Just as preparations for this campaign to
oust Tammany were being made, Mr.. Shepard
in speech at the Reform Club said:
The thing to do is to defeat the orsnnize-
tion which fs in power to-day. We have In
this city the heads of departments and bu-
reaus who do not take their orders from the
Mayor. but from the source from which they
secure their political preferment. They
know that the Mayor himself takes his or
ders from the same place
Now less than ten months later, Mr.. Shepard
is asking people not to defeat that organization,
but to elect Mayor who receives his political
preferment from the source whence came that
of the officials who Mr.. Shepard said should be
driven from power. And he himself is the
candidate who is to gain il they take this
amended advice! He is nominated by the Tam
many convention at the word Of one man. Rich
ard Croker. He is running a platform which
enthusiastically commends the present admins
tration, and in his address Of acceptance he
refers with favor to that platform, dissents from
no item in it, and testifes to the success of
many features of Mayor Van Wyck's rule. How
can he explain his sudden treason to the great
principle of Furnishing an unfaithful party no
matter what good nominations or promises OF
amendment it may maker In 1898 he promul-
gated that principle in opposition to Theodore
Roosevelt, saying:
Experience has shown that, however good
great executive may himself be, or however well
disposed his associates. his administration will
be safer and more wholesome if his party knows
that If he or it go wrong it will be inexorably
punished by dismissal.
Last winter Mr.. Shepard still adhered to this
principle, and applied it to the administration
of Mayor Van Wyck, demanding, as he did at
the Reform Club, the defeat OF the Tammany
organization without any reservation as to the
character of its candidate or the nature of the
opposition. He cannot excuse his abandonment
of that great principle Of Furnishing party wrong
doing by sophistries about the partisan charac-
ter of the opposition any plea that the pres
ent Tammany is not as bad as it was in Lexow
DAYS, or as he feared it would be in 1897, when
he supported Mr. Low and denounced its career
as "the most burning and dlsgraceful blot upon
the municipal history Of this country" 1t is
not simply the denunciations of 1897 which stare
him in the face. His denunciations uttered on
the eve OF this campaign, his truthful descrip-
ton of the city government as owing allegiance
to a private source of political power-none
other than Richard Croker, the power behind
his own nomination-stand to mock him, and
all his undeniable skill in dialectics will not
convince straightforward people that in his
heart he thinks Tammany any less disgraceful
and criminal than he has steadily almost up to
the present time charged 1t with being, or that
anything has occurred since the middle of last
December which makes the punishment by
defeat of wrongdoing political party less the
first dutyrof citizens than II was then. To Mr..
Shepard the preferment of Mr.. Shepard may
be the matter of supreme Importance. Other
men find themselves advised by his own teach
ings within ten months of their imperative duty
as honest and patriotic citizens ito defeat the
organization in power to-day" Notwithstanding
the sudden Identification of its interests with
his own.