Year: 1873

THE GOVERNMENT OF NEW-YORK CITY,


We have warned the people from the first
that they need not expect decent scheme OF
municipal government from the present Senate.
Latterly all pretense of legislating for the BEN
eft of the city has been abandoned at Albany,
and the advocates of the pending Charter
have avowed their purpose of fixing the gov
ernment of the chief city of the Union, not so
as to meet the wants of the citizens, but so as
to promote the supposed interests of the Repub-
lican party. They care nothing for an honest
administration, for economy in expenditure,
for efficiency in the executive departments, for
uprightness in the financial management.
Their sole care has been to manipulate the
appointing power in such way as to control
ward meetings and primary elections IN the
service of certain faction of Republican office
holders Senate and Assembly are both disgraced
by their partisan work. The wretched instru-
ment of their joint devising now hangs be-
tween them, huge monster of special legis-
lation, in which the welfare of city of q
million inhabitants is made subordinate to the
retention in Office of four men, three of them
relics of the Ring which was overthrown in
1871. and one person of such antece-
dents that he has earned the denuncia-
tions of every political party in turn. There
is no word to be said in palliat:on of the
shameless partisanship which has dictated this
Charter The retention of Controller Green
does not reconcile anybody to the attempted
wrong. He is a good officer, and we should
be glad to see him reappointed Controller in
the proper way; but it is a gross outrage upon
the principles of municipal government to keep
any man, good or bad, in Office by provision
of what purports to be an organic law.


Mr.. Godwins resolutions adopted by the
Union League Club, last Thursday, embody
the sentiments of a vast majority of the re-
spectable citizens of New York. For ourselves,
we believe that we should be best served
by electing a Mayor at frequent intervals, and
giving him uncontrolled power of appointing
the heads Of executive departments. But the
principle of nomination by the chief executive
and confirmation by the legislative body has
been SO generally adopted in our American
governments that it has almost become an un-
written law. Though not the best way in
municipal affairs, it is a good one; and we
are satisfied that it would work well enough
applied to the City of New-York
Mayor Havemeyer could nominate officers
of such conspicuous fitness that the
Aldermen would not venture to reject them )
if he did not, we should know how to hold
him responsible. We concur therefore in the
demand of the Union League Club "that the
"power of appointment should be given to
"the Mayor, with confirmation by the Board
"of Aldermen" untrammeled by special legis-
lation for the protection of any specified off,
cials, whether of the character of Andrew II.
Green or of Geo. NJ. Van Mort, Tweed's nomi-
nee, Delafeld Smith, the Rings last ap
pointment, OF "Hank" Smith. We concur also,
and most heartily, in the resolution that the
municipal elections should be held in the
"Spring of the year." Let us have our City
Government, which is purely matter Of
business, cut loose entirely from the compli-
cations of State and national politics and their
inevitable corruptons. This is indispensable.
No charter will be of much use to us with
ont II