Year: 1874

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template the benefcent result in politics OF
that kind of spasmodic virtue which, in the
name OF reform-in the name of an improved
and purified government-expels from Office
one set of political tricksters to give their
places to another set who differ from the first
only as the fresh flies in the fable differed
from the satiated fies-that is, by having q
hungrier NAV and fercer appetite. Ordi-
narily reform turns out in this way. 1t dis
places one bad government by another bad
government, and in this way we have been
driven from pillar to post for many years; but
our last reform was the worst of ALL and we
were never SO badly off as now. Practically
our government has come to a standstilL We
are without Mayor; for the strange old gen.
tleman who figures in that Office by acts and
words Of dwelling faulty has demonstrated
not merely his personal unftness for an impor-
tant place, but that he must be intellectually
nullity in any combination. Our police ser
vice is paralyzed also, and in any emergency
the disorganization at headquarters would tell
lamentably against the efficiency Of the force.
Here we are within three days of the 18th of
July-one of the regular riot days--and the
Police Board is in such condition that it
can take no action whatever on even trivial
subjects. Two Commissioners are out Of
office by sentence of court because they have
perverted the functions of their Office to party
intrigue, and two others are at best mere men
of straw. Suppose the Protestant Irish
should determine to parade, and the Catholic
Irish determine, as they have done before,
that there shall be no freedom in this city
but such as is agreeable to them, in what con-
dtion would the authorities be to assert the
supremacy Of the laws, with the police crippled
by disorgaAized commission and the Mayor
mere spectacle of incapacity2 And this is
reform


Zeal in the public service was the pretence
put forth in the campaign which gave our
''reformers" Office, and hunger for power and
patronage was the real motive it is the same
way now against them. With the knowledge
now before the public it can readily be seen
how impudent pretence it was that the men
at present in Office were any honester than the
Tammany plunderers yet, strange as it may
appear, the present extrsvagant, corrupt and
even imbeciIe administration of the depart
ments of the municipal government was in
stalled in the name OF economy and honesty
and amid frantic shrieks Of laudation from
its hangers-on and organs. Many virtuous
old gentlemen in these latitudes we're carried
away by this noise. Disguised and Mortified
by the outrageous robberies of Tammany, in
which there seemed to be no sense of shame
and no concealment they lent their
names and the respectability of their
characters and positions to cover the game of
a clique of political intriguers, and so made
that game appear for q time like a genuine up
rising of the people in the name Of honesty.
Yet all that began in quarrel among the
original sharpers. One Of the number failed
to get the money for some claim he had against
the city, and as he could not obtain his money
he exposed the practices that had never seemed
to him particularly odious until his demands
on the public treasury were met with refusal
1t was for the public good that those exp posures
were made, and the indignation then excited
at corruption in Office was righteous and just,
and might have been of the greatest use in





honest administration of the city government
But the persons most conspicuously noisy in the
name Of virtue on thatoccasion had no inten-
ton that they should operate in that way.
Honesty in public Office was not likely to be
more profitable to them than it had been to the
Tammany men themselves and while they
vociferously shouted that what the public SER
vice wanted was honest men, they adrotly in
dicated that the only honest men In the COM
munity were some particular friends Of theirs,
through whom they hoped to make political
power as profitable to themselves as the Tam
many men had made it to all their ad-
herents.


In that way q movement that if carried to its
legitimate result might have been revolution
in favor of honesty in Office and might have
given us what we have not had for two gen.
eratons-an efficient and pure city govern
ment-was defeated by the persons who were
permitted by common public consent
to assume control of it. They defeated it
because it had accomplished all they wished
it to accomplish when it had driven Tammany
from the field, and they turned it aside from
its further proper purpose in order that it
might put their creatures in the places from
which Tammany was driven-not to improve
the administration of the Offices but to put
the plunder in different pockets. How effect
lively these men have outdone the work of
Tammany the city accounts will show but
though they have actually improved upon the
frightful example Of the expelled power, they
have certainly helped themselves more adroitly
and have more successfully kept the thin
pretexts Of the law in their favor, and this
result might have been anticipated from the
fact that they had before them as o warning
the fate of Tammany, which fell through its