BoletiÌn mercantil de Puerto Rico. (San Juan, P.R.) 18??-1918, 1902-05-24
SAFJJUAN, MAYO d
The Re0| IQ|lnl01y.

Mr.. Lewis Nixons selection as leader
of Tammany Hall always seemed to us
as absurd as the appointment OF New
England deacon to the command of a
pirate ship. Yet with his ideas of naval
discipline he seemed to think that a
good man on the quarterback would
speedily reform The cutlasses, and piped
them regularly aft to prayers. They en-
tered heartily for time into the spirit
of the ioke-one of the best OF, their
late captains, Deadeye Dick, they
thought it-spruced themselves up, left
off their g1og, plotted their piracies and
murders only be.wee 1decks, and under
took to be in public as sweet and sub
missive as Pirate of Penzance. But
this could not las, The free life of the
buccaneer on the bounding wave, watch
ing for his prey, soon reasserted its po-
wer over them, and they promptly mott
fed their reforming commander that
the little farce of his nominal leadership
was over.
This is the real significance of Mr..
Nixon's indignant retirement from the
headship of Tammany. He has at last
discovered, what he should have known
from the first, that light hath no fellow
ship with darkness, and that an honest
man, bent on good municipal govern
ment, is as much out of place among
existing Tammany sache1ns and district
leaders as a Sdnday-school superinten-
dent would be in the councils of Beelze-
bub The whole thing was a fraud and
imposture from the teginning. We do
not say that Mr. Nixon was party to
the attempt to deceive fhe public. His
character he has saved at the expense
of his intelligence He vowed from the
first that he would not be mere fgu-
rehead, though every one knew he was
just that, and when even he found out
that both Croker and the other Tamma-
ny magnatas had been playing false
with him all along, he did the only
thing left for an honest man to do
openly said that an effort had been
made to cheat and trick him, and that
he would have no more to do with an
obvious imposition.
The result is of the highest public
utility. It leaves Tammany once more
unn1asked. We see it as it is. All the
hypocritical pretences of change of heart
and change of method are We ot away.
Mr. Nixon has, in fact, been Of signal
service to the city II took just his pc
culiar combination of qualities to make
the demonstration which he has now af-
forded us-namely, the complete demo
litlon of the 0ne-goodman theory. The
wayfaring man can now perceive that a
den of thieves remains a den of thieves
even if presided over by a saint Mr.
Nixon seemed as if desi gned by a kind
fate for the very work he has no " per-
formed. Even Croker's sagacity would
have had to search long before finding
another tool SO perfectly fitted to his
hand. Mr.. NiSon was solen1nly in ear
nest. He really seems to have thought
that Tammany could be reformed as the
Duke of Wellington imagined England
could be governed, by word of command.
He had honesty and ability enough to
ADMIT that reform was necessary, but
his perceptions were SO dull, or his ex-
perience so slight, that he did not see
how impossible it was for Tammany to
commit. suicide-for a self reformed
Tammany is necessarily a self-killed
Tammany. In this respect, Mr.. Nixon
might have said with the unconscious
M. P. that he represented a very dense
constituency. His public utterances
about his plans and purposes were in
truth, SO exquisitely grotesqu9 that his
good character was established by his
bad reasoning. AS Curran said of an
opponent, he could not argue SO foolis-
hly if his intentions had not been ex.
cellenl, and the more he showed that
his head was disconnected, the more he
cauvlnced yoa that his heart was
sincere.