Year: 1870

10 without precedeDt in the jurisprudence OF
this or any other country. We mean the Erie
Bill. If any man would appreciate the enor-
nifty of this affront to public morality and
rapine of private rights and property, let him
imagine the Erie Railway to be the estate of
q natural instead of an artificial person, and
that natural person himself; and then regard
his condition under this law. His condition
will be the type of that of every Erie stock
holder, not a member of the Ring. With his
hands tied, but eyes unbandaged, he is con-
strained day by day to look on osten-
tatious displays of barbario splendor, all
maintained by the plunder OF his own
domain. Escape by selling out is cut OIL, be-
cause the property which yielded him income
when its gross receipts amounted to Twelve
millions, and had a considerable value III
market, has become nearly worthless, paying
no dividend out of gross earnings OF moro
than sixteen millions. All this is the work OF
agents, concerning whose identity there was
as little question as about their character,
either in the public mind or his own; ana,
when he would appeal to the recourse OF all
good citizens under oppression, the Courts, ne
encounters this law, which perversely and
wickedly enjoins submission on the part OF
the robbed and grants immunity and even
protection to the robbers.


The Legislature did indeed pass this law !;
but there happened to be to its jurisdiction,
what there was not to its depravity-a limit.
Without something more, this Act would have
festered and rotted on its journals the Statute-
Book would have escaped deflement, and this
corporation legalized raid. The iniquity was
spawned, but the milt necessary to yitallze 1t
belonged to another department. The needed
element was supplied by these words: APP
"proved, John T. Hoffman" If this enact
ment aggravated the baseness of the rOgues
and blockheads who passed it, what shall be
thought of the Governor who approved 1t, he
being neither rogue nor blOckheadf lie was
endowed with the intelligence they lacked )
he was sober, as the most of them were not ;
and it cannot be believed that his action was
bought, as theirs was. Yet he approved this
bill; intelligent, sober, and virtuOus as he
is. The truth probably is that there are two
Hoffmans; and he is by no means the first of
our race who has lived a sort of dual exist
ence. The private life of Mr.. Hoffman is pure
and excellent to an exemplary degree, and by
contrast is as sharp a rebuke 10 the lives OF his
most intimate friends and cOunsel0rs as 1T Is
to his own public life, But it is mot this
"man, but Barabbas" who is Governor when
John II. Hoffman is elected. He is the tool,
slave, attorney, of Tammany and its Ring. VI
this, there is such evidence that it almost
justifes suspicion that he has come
to love the bondage, and would rather
weld than break his chains. Out OF
this relation, came the approving of this law;
and from it will proceed many kindred SER
vice. Although this read as letter OF
marque and reprisal against all railroads, Gov.
Hoffman knew as well as Tweed, Gould, OF
Fisk, that it had been devised for the present
capture of the Erie Road, and that for that
atrocious purpose only had the Legislature
enacted it. And for no other purpose did he
approve it. Mr. Hoffman, the private citizen,
would sooner have cut off his hand than set it
to what Mr.. Hoffman, the Governor, did. On
the extremely rare occasions when some pur-
pose of Tammany was to be served by the
enforcement of a law against crime, the firm
ness of the Governor was such that
men thought of Rome, and ceased to
wonder at certain of his prOciyities
But Brutus went out of mind when it was
remembered with what alacrity the Executive
influence and prerogative had been used to
remove legal restraints and provide facilities
when Tammany desired to steal railroads, stuff
ballot-boyes, or falsfy election returns What
ever may be the moral excellence and propriety
of Gov. Hoffman's private life, it is very
evident that it is to profit the people nothing
in his public administration. That can never
rise above the aims and morals of Tammany
and all the world knows what they are
1t is worse than nothing that one alb
stains from crime himself, while he uses
the credit of that abstinence and his official
influence and power TO fortify and protect
those who do commit it. The Erie case utters
a solemn warning that in any struggle where
private rights, manifest justice, the good name
and best interests of the State, come in con-
flict with the villainOus rapacity of the wealth
lest Guild of Rogues in all Christendom, the
| triumph of wrong and dishonor is certain, if
Gov. Hoffman be umpire. Let no voter who
shall cast ballot for that gentleman for Gov
eTnor delude himself with the notion that it
will contribute to the election of anybody but
Mr.. Tweed The fact that his action is controlled
less by his own virtues than by the vices of
others, renders the one unfit for the position
to which he is renOminated; and the reelection
of the other by proxy would be positively
dangerous because of his own well-known
art and propensity to transmute or obliterate
the moral qualities of others, and because of
his capacity to transform better but weaker
men than himself into instruments less
Infamous and more specious and useful for
his purposes, than the undisguised scoundrels
of his Ring who constitute the substratum of
his power and dominion.


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