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THE MYSTERY OF INIQUITY.
A PASSAGE OF THE SECRET HISTORY OF AMERICAN POLITICS, ILLUSTRATED BY A VIEW OF METROPOLITAN SOCIETY.

The machinery of election frauds in the city of New York, is a matter so important to the fate and history of the republican system, and yet so remote from the knowledge of even the most intelligent politicians, as to be worthy of special and elaborate notice in an “American Review,” on whose pages may be sought, in other times, portions of the history of the age, as evidences of the success or failure of this first experiment in practical democracy—actual popular self-government. That such frauds exist has long been notorious. No New York politician would risk his reputation for veracity and intelligence so far as to deny it. But of the details, the system, the extent of these operations, much remains to be communicated, even to those best informed and most active in the political movements of the last few years. The subject, however, is one not easily investigated. The success of these frauds was of course insured only by profound secresy [sic], and by subordination and obedience among the inferior agents, excluding each from a knowledge of any more than his own | guilty part. Those who alone know all, or enough to show the extent and character of the operation, are so prominent in position and in the profits of the iniquity, as to be above the reach of ordinary inducements to betray the facts of which they themselves were the chief authors.

The investigation is, therefore, beset with difficulties, tending to produce despair of success on the part of any who, believing the general fact, seek the particulars and the proofs. It requires singular gifts,—courage, energy and pertinacity, of a peculiar order, sustained by enthusiastic devotion to the cause of truth and justice, and by the hope and prospect of results mighty beyond prudent expectation. It demands, also, an exclusive appropriation of time, study, patience, observation and reflection, and forces the encounter of many annoyances and dangers, incurred by the necessary association with abandoned and desperate men, in whose experience the truth is contained. Money, too, as well as costly time and labor, is wanted, in amount beyond ordinary means, for uses which are |442| essential to the main purpose. Other requirements, all that can be imagined, are included in the conditions of success or even progress.

Guarded by these difficulties against the perils of inquiry and detection, the authors of these frauds have hardened in confidence, cool determination and impunity. After an election, the defeated partisans soon forget the inquiry into causes ; and it is impossible to arouse them to the painful labor of searching for the mode and means of their own irretrievable calamity. The fruitless contest once fully past, disappointment vents itself in vain curses ; and wrath soon evaporates in threats as idle as the wind. The combination of force kept up in hope of success, vanishes in defeat ; and the recently associated agents of the defeated party meet again only as strangers, until a new movement inspires new hope in another contest—while the victorious leaders of faction divide the spoils, with a security which can tolerate no feeling towards their baffled foes but indifference or contempt.

The great and manifold difficulties thus shown, as besetting such an investigation, have, in this instance, been met, by the possession of the means and qualifications enumerated, to an extent which can be better demonstrated by the results attained than by preliminary statements, which might seem prematurely boastful or egotistical. It is enough now to say, that the unremitting labor of many months has been given to this task, in total exclusion of all other interests and occupations ; and the facts are therefore presented, from the outset, with a confidence in the full mastery of the whole subject and its necessary proofs, which will be shared by all, as the development progresses.

The time selected for this revelation is peculiarly adapted to the accomplishment of its best purposes, and to the acquirement of the public confidence in its truth, and its independence of personal or temporary advantages. The great contest on which so many public and private interests depended, and which bore so many away from the control of moral principle by its powerful excitements—is now closed ; and its momentous, irreversible result has been registered. Not even a local object now remains to be promoted, either in the shape of a Charter Election, with its corporation patronage in view of the contestants, or a State election, with its higher gifts and dignities, with its gubernatorial | and Congressional honors and its influence on the National mind. The period between this and any future important action by popular suffrage will be so long, that no “effect” or temporary excitement could be produced, and no successful perversion or permanent mis-representation of facts hoped for. Whatever may be put forth seeming to any worthy of denial, confutation or condemnation, the date and circumstances “leave ample room and verge enough” to enlighten and correct public opinion, and vindicate all claiming a hearing or redress, before the judgment of the people has been pronounced in its only effective form—the ballot.

Equally is discarded every pretense of impressing the public mind anywhere with the sense of implied injustice done to any individual candidate or party or cause, by a decision wrongfully obtained or erroneously recorded. For the vindication either of the man or the people, such a demonstration would be valueless. Both are already placed on higher grounds. The character and principles of those who by their votes maintained the right, are enough, and are well enough known by all Christendom, to vindicate them beyond suspicion—and to maintain them in as much honor as ever accrued to wronged patriotism.

This investigation, its purposes, its possible consequences, have no designed relation to the advantage or prospects of any person. It is no appeal, no writ of error against the judgment of that tribunal which, right or wrong, renders the last and highest of human decisions. The whole inquiry is simply a post-mortem examination, with the purpose of ascertaining the cause of death and the manner and instrument of the crime, for the instruction and security of all who shall come after, that those who distrust the people’s sense and despair of justice from the public judgment, may derive encouragement from these evidences of a fraud in the mere means of declaring and manifesting that judgment.

As a contribution to the history of man, it wall be valuable ; and its worst developments will but elevate the character of the great whole, while they display the abominations of a few. Men of this and other countries, enslaved or free, will be the wiser for this unfolding of truths. All that was desired by the patriotic, the wise, the good, as to the moral significance of the late great trial of principles |443| and men, will be obtained in the fruits of this inquiry ; and it will place in history a lesson of renewed hope and fortitude to republican faith. With these facts established, the friends of liberty may yet rely on the just judgment of a free people, as to the best exercise of their power.

The cause, the manner and the instrument of the result cannot be credibly made known, until the nature of these agencies is developed, by an exhibition of the character of a peculiar and hitherto undescribed portion of the population of “the great city.” The resources of political crime are found in the social elements and combinations of the metropolitan community. The seat of actual power in this true democracy has long been the subject of a problem, yet unsolved. With the source of new principles and dogmas, origination of purposes, this question has nothing to do. But to ascertain the means of their accomplishment by the ballot, is an object at once momentous in interest and practicable in effect.

Within a circle of three miles’ radius, on and around the Island of Manhattan, may now be found nearly half a million of people. Very few of these know anything of the characters, pursuits or relations of their fellow-citizens. Society is here completely divided into classes, arranged generally according to occupations, separated from each other by distinctions of property, of employment, of association and habit. Business is the one great word which fully expresses the main object and leading idea of the community. It characterizes the mass, and gives the city all its greatness, fame, wealth and power. Absorbed in the pursuit of gain, the vast majority of the people are ever sedulously practicing the familiar precept, that “every man should mind his own business, and let others mind theirs.” The comparatively few who are devoted to pleasure and fashion exclusively, to mere expenditure without acquisition, constitute no distinct class here, and give character to no class in society. As far as wealth furnishes title to distinction, and justifies high claims to rank and influence, it is from resources increasing by thrift, not stationary by free use, or diminishing by extravagance. The richest here are still laboriously accumulating new riches by active “business.” No withdrawal from the pursuits in which their property was obtained could add to their dignity or share of public respect, | any more than it could to their happiness. The few idlers who “live upon their means” are but tolerated, not honored, among their more active associates, who rejoice in daily augmentation of affluence.

From the jurist, the professor, the divine, the banker, and the lord of a square mile of buildings, or of a score of floating palaces, to the industrious day laborer, whose hand hews or places the materials of the structures of wealth and pride, all conditions of men are here alike in purpose, and regard none as ranking above them because exempt from the wish or need of gain. Such are the mass of society—such in simplicity and unity of purpose, in patient, hopeful industry, in devotion to business, and in harmony of feeling and action. They are a very large majority of the permanent residents of the city, and, by natural right, and true democratic republican principle, should rule it and direct its power and influence in the government of the State and Union. But it happens that though they are many, they are not all.

There is a class remote in aim and character from these, alien from their sympathies, and indifferent or hostile to their prosperity,—disdaining their objects and pursuits, or despairing of success in them. Though the beneficent influences of protective republican legislation thus far make them few, they are formidable by their very smallness of number, and their consequent monopoly of the mighty resources of lawless adventure, fraud, violence and crime. In every great city, gathers a throng of men, desperate from various causes, of which want is the predominant one. With some, it is want of the absolute necessaries of life ; with many, it is merely the want of the abundant means of the gratification of vicious impulses and extravagant fancies. Most of them have, at one time or another, made attempts to acquire a livelihood or a fortune by honest, regular means, but failing of success, either by error or calamity, have concluded that those who secure comfort or wealth by lawful pursuits, do it only by knavery, carefully disguised in external respectability. The unhappiness induced by misfortune, takes the form of a peculiar misanthropy. They declare and believe that no man is truly honest, and that those who are reputed virtuous and high-principled, only seem so. This contempt of others, and others’ pursuits, relieves their pangs of discontent, envy, or despair, by raising |444| their self-respect, as they compare themselves with the distorted images of society which they have formed. Having decided that “there is no virtue extant,” they resolve that they are better than others in pretending to none—that they are peculiarly honorable, because they frankly and truly avow their dishonesty.

The principles thus formed, suggest and direct a life of adventure, recklessness, frequent dishonesty, vicious indulgence, and unlawful art. They become gamblers, gambling-house keepers, writers and publishers of obscene and licentious books and papers, sham-brokers, “Tombs-lawyers,” “straw-bail” men, “skinners,” “touchers,” professional perjurers, police decoy-ducks and “stool-pigeons,” receivers of stolen goods, sharpers, impostors, prize-fighters, mock-auctioneers, watch-stuffers, pocket-book droppers, brothel-owners and bullies, cock-fighters, dog-stealers, street beggars, and so on through innumerable grades and inventions of roguery, down to counterfeiters, pickpockets, incendiaries, highway robbers, and burglars. The English language, originally too poor to express all these abominations, has been enriched by the addition of new terms, coined or compounded to represent the novelties of crime in the American metropolis.

All these designated occupations, and more, not here specified, exist in New York, though unknown, even by name, to a large portion of the population. Various as are these forms of villany [sic], they all harmonize in principle and purpose. The actors in these crimes, strong in the consciousness of their numbers and common sympathies, constitute a distinct community, with rules and resources which make them formidable in every relation to the commonwealth, but especially in their power and influence in party politics. To understand their agencies in these movements, it must be noted that there are ranks and classes among them, distinguished from each other by the ordinary varieties of pursuits, associations, means, intelligence, manners, dress, and style of living. Though of one accord in principle, all seeking their own good by the injury of others, they vary in the means of accomplishing their radically evil purposes. The better portion of them (the better because pretending to less of worldly honor) seek their bare livelihood in avowed violation of the law of the land, which has its own means of efficient vindication. The worst | and most dangerous portion neither steal nor murder “within the statute.” Their crimes are moral, not technical. They take, without rendering an equivalent, their thousands, while the common thief but pilfers in units. The vulgar criminal walks in rags, while they shine in costly apparel and jewelry. The mere pickpocket meets swift and just retribution, and finds a felon’s punishment and infamy, and a felon’s dishonored grave ; but they triumph in wholesale crime, and flaunt their splendid livery of guilt among the noblest and proudest of the great republic. They even sit on the very throne of justice, and dispense its dread revenge on their meaner and more unfortunate associates, who are doomed to evince the terrors of an imperfect law by the sufferings of the prison, the manacle or the gallows. The children of misfortune, who alone are reached by vindictive human justice, are but the creatures, the tools of the children of extravagance and pride, whose more dangerous vices constitute the patronage and countenance of vulgar crime.

The whole class, thus characterized, numbers thousands of citizens of New York—all voters. It has hardly occurred, as yet, to those curious in moral and political statistics, to enumerate this unregistered portion of society. Their numbers, their names, their occupations, have no place in the “business directory” of New York, though their political and social action is felt everywhere. At the head of this great league and community of wickedness, and especially directing the action of the whole in politics, is a body of men commonly known by the term “sporting characters,” constituting the aristocracy of roguery. This higher class of adventurers are often found partially disguised under the nominal profession of honorable callings, such as those of brokers, lawyers, occasionally merchants and shopkeepers ; and some of them are proprietors, where they have managed their various unlawful gains with prudence. But all are gamblers, and derive their real profits from the resources of that infamous pursuit. In dress, manners, equipage, and all the externals of life, they are ambitious and ostentatious, often seeking to intrude themselves among the respectable classes of society. They keep fine horses, famous for speed and performances on the “Avenues” and the “Island,” driving them in elegantly modeled light vehicles, and compete with |445| wealthy country gentlemen and sportsmen in the breed of their dogs, in the finish of their guns, and the various apparatus of the sports of the field. Their tastes, amusements, occupations and characters, differ little from those of the profligate, gambling, sporting aristocracy of Britain, the members of the fashionable clubs of the West End of the British metropolis, constituting a large portion of the nobility and gentry, who, placed by hereditary wealth and distinction above the necessity of useful occupation, devote their lives to a laborious competition with coachmen, jockeys, dog-fanciers, blacklegs, prize-fighters, huntsmen and gamekeepers. Proud of this association of character and identity of pursuit, the American “sporting aristocracy” look down upon the honorable portion of their fellow-citizens engaged in the successful, though laborious occupations of the professions, trades, arts and commerce, with very much the same feeling as do the profligate lordlings across the water on the substantial merchants and mechanics of the city of London, and with quite as much real cause for their assumed superiority in the scale of being.

In the gambling houses of Park-Place, Vesey street, Broadway, &c., on all the great race-courses, often at the fashionable watering-places and summer resorts, at the concourse of political adventurers around the great seats of legislation, these characters are to be found exercising their gifts, and gratifying their fancies for pleasure or display—entrapping their victims, the heirs of great estates, or weak men, suddenly raised by speculation or other accident, to the possession of wealth. But these occupations, parades and pastimes, are secondary to their main business, and merely serve to fill the intervals of a more important series of engagements. To these gambling gentry, the great game is Politics. In its splendid combination of chances and boundless facilities for cheating, imposture and trickery, they see a worthy field for the exercise of their peculiar arts ; and they enter it with a cool confidence in their own possession of the needful qualifications for success in it, which places them beyond the competition of those less versed and experienced in corrupt human nature, less familiar with the agencies of fraud and crime, or less unscrupulous about their employment for such purposes.

| The larger portion of this class of men, hardened and chilled by their manner of life—with native sympathies and generous impulses destroyed, and with passions schooled into conformity to the most effectual means of their own gratification—regard the ordinary contests of political parties with as little interest in the pending issues, as they would feel in the ultimate prosperity of any corporation in whose stock they might speculate for a time, merely to transfer it to some incautious purchaser who might be induced to take it at more than its true value. Such, in the abstract, would always be their view of partisan strifes, holding themselves supremely indifferent to any circumstance but the chance of securing large gains by heavy odds in their favor on the results. Betting on elections is with them a study, or trade, or craft, the most important branch of their regular business ; and the mode of securing gain to themselves is the same as in those manipulations of cards and dice which to the dupe only are games of chance, while to the practiced cheat they truly are games of skill. Thus they play in politics, where the ballot is the die, and the voter is the card. They play at this game also with “loaded dice” and”marked cards.” And whenever they enter into the business of elections with money staked upon the result, they proceed with as much confidence in the production of the majorities on which their winnings depend, as they do in their gambling-houses, where all the supposed chances of the faro-table, the roulette, the rouge et noir, the dice-box, the cut, the shuffle and the deal, are converted, by their knavish arts, and secret marks, and mechanical contrivances, into positive certainties of fraudulent gain.

The recent developments of Mr. Green, the reformed gambler, in his various public lectures and communications on this subject, have made these illustrations sufficiently intelligible, and furnish abundant evidence of the universal dishonesty of the whole gamester-craft and profession.

Yet these men are not so artificial and impartial as to be totally without opinions and preferences in politics. The political bias of the whole class is instinctive towards that party which seeks power by patronizing crime, encouraging and defending lawlessness, violence and fraud, and which abuses the possession of power to reward, patronize and promote the |446| evil agencies which secure its success,—the party which appeals continually to the envy and prejudice of the poor against the rich,—which wars against the interests of “business men,” and against that policy of credit and protection by which are secured the rewards of enterprise, honesty, thrift and industry. Did every man in that community of crime act according to the principles and instincts of his caste, there would not be an exception to the universal application of the rule by which their associations in party politics are determined. But there are among them some, who, though identified with them in disregard of public opinion and the moral sense of respectable society, in irregular and adventurous lives and in depraved and sensual tastes, have yet some remains of an originally better nature about them, some dash of the heroic in their perverted spirit, some sentiment of true manly honor among those artificial notions of it which they share with desperadoes and outlaws. There are a few such, who, however degraded in principle and darkened in moral perception, refuse to follow the bent of their order in politics, and who, though indifferent on ordinary party questions, do occasionally act with those that seek to honor the honorable, and discard fraud and falsehood from their schemes and policy.

Though there is not one in a hundred of “the sporting class” who can claim this exemption, yet it should be regarded in a statement designed as this is to be exact in every particular. There are not known to be ten—it is hardly possible that there are twenty—of the gambling fraternity who differ from their associates in their political sentiments ; and these are consequently excluded from familiarity with the details of their political action.

There are also many hangers-on, occasional associates, dupes or pupils of the tribe, sons of respectable or wealthy people, falsely ambitious and dashing young “business men,” who frequent gambling-houses and similar dens of roguery and vice, but have neither experience, sense nor desperation to make them anything more than “honorary” members of the order, or to admit them to the mysteries of the craft. There are many thriving merchants, brokers, professional men, shipmasters and others of various respectable pursuits, including some from the country, occasionally here mingling with | these licentious banditti,—ambitious and even vain of association with them, but alien from their sympathies, and elevated above them in opportunities of gain without the plea of necessity for lawless adventure and infamous occupation. Totally independent of all these volunteers, both in counsel and action, are the class before described. Occasional but rare personal sympathies of character and habit render permanent their connection with these incidental associates ; but, in general, these are but their subjects and victims.

The characteristics of these different social classes embody the hidden elements of political principle and power—the secret of American political history. In the class of the adventurous, the vicious, the desperate, the lawless, the criminal—is found a unity of feeling and purpose, which pervades the whole in their moral association, without reference to accidental and often temporary and transient differences in rank, situation, and means of comfort, pleasure or display. Through all these widely-variant grades of villany,—from the aristocratic gambler and faro-banker in Park Place or Vesey street, down to the copper-tossing ragged vagrant of Corlaer’s Hook, the occasional inmate of Blackwell’s island and the brothel-bully and “toucher” of the Five Points or West Broadway, there extends a wondrous social sympathy, a conscious harmony of purpose and electric unity of action, not more fearful in aspect than woful [sic] in experiment to the honest, industrious, peaceful portion of society. Strong in this Masonic fellowship and secret mutual aid in violation of the public laws and morals, they fear not to attempt any crime, however startling to the popular apprehension, and however audacious in its defiance of municipal agencies of justice. The murder of the wretched Corlies on the most frequented corner of Broadway at the most stirring hour of the evening, only two years ago, was not effected without the deliberate premeditation and cooperation of a large body of this very class of men, who did not hesitate afterwards publicly to avow their approval of the crime and their resolution to screen the perpetrators at all hazards. Similar impunity has been enjoyed in other cases even more shocking to the public mind. Who does not know of the horrible case of the murder of Mary Rogers ? Her fate was and is no mystery to some. The author of that hideous, horrible, unnatural butchery of a young |447| and beautiful female was known then to some officers of justice, and is known now. Hundreds of criminals of that and minor grades are sheltered by the same awful combination of criminal agencies, and are discharged from actual arrest and imprisonment, often without form of trial, by collusions of judicial as well as executive agents in league with the secret community of blood and fraud. They stand to one purpose, and stand by each other in its accomplishment.

With such traits, connections and powers, this class become, in political movements, the lords of the land, the controllers of government, the arbiters of the commonwealth’s destiny. That they can be such is evident—that they have been and are such, will soon be shown.

“Business men” continually assure active politicians who solicit their co-operation, that they “have no time to attend to politics,” that they “can take no part in it, because it injures business.” Those who have been herein described hear this and rejoice ; on this current declaration they base their action. They have time for it, and they attend to it for the business men. It will not injure their business.

Thus have the industrial and intellectual orders of this community prostrated themselves and their country before the mammon of unrighteousness. Thus have they forgotten and disowned their most sacred rights and duties, and left them to the off-scouring and scum of civilized society. Thus by them “the shield of the mighty was vilely cast away in the midst of the battle.” Thus, the interests of the people, unfortunately entrusted to the enterprising and respectable portion of the community, were by them betrayed in the hour of the commonwealth’s greatest need, the crisis of peace or war, of order or lawlessness, of the protection or abandonment of the interests of the governed by the government. Yes ! that very class—the self-righteous, self-wise, who most frequently exclaim against the imagined evils of universal suffrage, who so often lament the admission of the poor, the uneducated, the foreign-born, the vicious, and the criminal, to the elective franchise, and who would be glad to see that franchise restricted to themselves,—they, and “nobody else,” have proved themselves unworthy of a freeman’s birthright, and incapable of their share of the responsibilities of a republican government. The poor man always | votes. The prosperous man basely and indolently neglects this great duty in multiplied instances ; and even when he pretends to perform it, often makes it of no good effect, by a variable and equivocating ballot, thrown sometimes for one set of principles and sometimes for another.

Noting these facts and their practical bearing, with an acuteness cultivated by long experience, the adventurous and dissolute establish and defend their position in politics by an unanswerable reference to them. “Why permit the policy of the government to be directed for the benefit or protection of those who will neither act for themselves in politics nor second or support those who act and labor for them ? Rich and prosperous men, and those devoted to the pursuit of regular traffic, are almost universally selfish, narrow-minded, ungrateful, uncharitable. By the possession of these very traits they acquire their wealth or competence. They are glad to have the less fortunate work for them gratis. They never pay for service rendered, except in cases where the law can compel them. In buying and selling, in employing and paying the laborer, it is their rule to ‘take every advantage,’ to get as much more for their merchandise and money than its real value as possible, by misrepresentation, exaction, or the necessities of those who deal with them or labor for them. Men do not grow rich or remain so by generosity, truthfulness, patriotism, or high-minded consideration of the good of others and the common benefit of society. We, however, denounced by them as immoral and dishonest, and excluded from ‘good society,’ are free from many of ‘the vices of trade,’ though in our way we may often be less careful to keep ‘within the statute.’ We may cheat the world and violate the law of the land, but we never cheat one another as they do, and we never break our own laws nor disregard our rules and pledges of honor among ourselves. We esteem ourselves better gentlemen and better men. The higher classes, the privileged orders, the would-be aristocracy of wealth, would wheedle us and use us the day before election, and spurn us the day after.”

This is the common sentiment of this desperado class, and is often repeated in language almost identical with this. With these bitter things in their hearts and on their tongues, they take their position and movement in politics, assuming the power |448| abandoned to them by those whose injury and humiliation they seek. In their war on what is sometimes regarded as the patrician order, they are joined and often led by many who, like the betrayers of liberty in Rome, descend from their originally higher associations to obtain power by pandering to the prejudices of the ignorant, base, and vicious. The very language which Publius Clodius and Julius Cæsar, and Marcus Antonius addressed to the populace of Rome, and the artful appeals to envy and prejudice, by which they defeated Cicero, Cato, Brutus and Cassius, are here faithfully translated day after day, and repeated year after year—with the same effect,—by those who, in republican America renew the woful experience of republican Rome, and with literal exactness represent the purposes of those who then and thus secured, at the same instant, the triumph and the death of democracy, converting the people’s power to the people’s ruin. This striking analogy is not confined to the leaders of these movements, their arts of deceit, their language, and their purposes. The materials, the instruments, with which the American Clodii work are identical in character and origin with those possessed by their Roman prototypes, who, in the name of “the largest liberty to all men,” and with the pretense of “enlarging the area of freedom” by conquest and fraud, enslaved the people, cheated them of their liberties, and deluged half the world with innocent blood.

The Rome which Julius Cæsar ruled numbered not within its walls more human beings than are found on the shores of the great estuaries which surround the Rome of the New World. It had not a tithe of the wealth of New York, even when enriched by the spoils of the conquered Orient. Had that American intellect and enterprise which has here concentrated its mighty energies in the peaceful pursuits of commerce, trade, and useful art, but been directed by other influences in the path of war, by this time the Atlantic republic might have ruled by the sword, that half of the world which it now pervades with its traffic, its inventions in art, its moral influence, and its Christian charities. To the characteristics of its origin does it owe the difference of its destiny. The song of the angels when they descended to announce to men the advent of God incarnate, at the period of the census of the Roman empire in the acme of the second imperial Cæsar’s | triumph and power, was “Peace on earth, good will to men.” However imperfectly embodied here the spirit of that revelation, no man can reasonably doubt that its influences have been felt, not only in the foundation of the American commonwealth, but in the general direction of the wonderful power which it has here developed in the enterprises of peace. Yet, as has already been shown, the vices of peace have grown and flourished in this nominally Christian community, with a luxuriance equaling, probably surpassing, the vilest forms of depravity under the full influences of ancient heathenism. In the disregard of human life, and the insecurity of the rights of property, in the contempt of a solemn oath, in falsehood, deceit, and hypocrisy, and in numerous other immoralities, republican heathen Rome never gave examples of so abominable a character as New York. The dissolute classes with whom Catiline, Clodius and Antony associated, and whose support they secured in their political movements, in their conspiracies and riots, are reproduced with aggravated characteristics, in the dens of vice and crime which are found throughout this and several other American cities. The vivid pictures of those licentious and dangerous portions of the population of Rome and of their haunts, which are given by Sallust and Cicero, will strongly impress the considerate American reader with the sense of the dangers of like effects from like causes here.

The Mode and Means of the political action of these connected orders of crime in New York City, remain to be detailed. The present law of the State of New York regulating elections furnishes the basis and directs the manner of fraud. In 1840, the Legislature passed an Act relating to the Elections and the Elective Franchise, limited in operation to this city alone, by which the annual State Election in November was confined to one day instead of three, and the various Wards were divided into election-districts, each containing not more than five hundred voters, all being registered as qualified citizens at a fixed period before each election. The public registration of electors in such small sections furnished abundant safeguards against fraud, by giving opportunity and time for a rigid investigation of the legality of every vote by all political parties. The reduction of the time from three days to one, served under the registry also to diminish |449| greatly the facilities for illegal voting. The actual registration was, however, the vital characteristic of the law, and was essential to the purity of the ballot. Without it, the multiplication of the places of voting could only increase the means and opportunities of fraud. In 1842, the registration was abolished by act of Legislature ; but the provision creating small election-districts was retained, or re-enacted, and subsequently extended to the whole State. The one-day clause was also continued and made general ; but this, while in one respect it seemed to hinder fraud by preventing the transfer of illegal voters from one section to another at great distance, did, on the other hand, withdraw many checks by inducing the suspension of all inquiry into such crimes except on a single day. It is a well-known fact, that no party organization can maintain any vigilance, or make any successful inquisition into election-frauds, for the mere purpose of vengeance or of asserting the law. The moment the polls are closed, attention is totally absorbed in curiosity as to the result ; and when that is known, all interest in politics ceases. The victorious party do not care for the frauds which their adversaries have committed unsuccessfully against them ; and the defeated cannot be rallied to an inquiry so difficult and disagreeable. If the election continued three days, vigilance would be maintained throughout to the last. Nearly all the lawful votes would be deposited on the first day, which would of course keep the whole force of each party in the field, active and watchful. During the remainder of the time, when non-resident voters would naturally make their attempts at repeated voting, every effort would be made to impress them with a sense of the danger, by arrests and imprisonments, a few instances of which at the beginning would be enough to deter all volunteer cheating. The anxiety and interest prevailing to the final close of the polls would secure an unintermitted [sic] watchfulness which could not be frustrated except by violence and riot. Without a registration of voters, therefore, it would be better to allow three days for every important election, and to have the balloting places as few and as distant from each other as possible.

Thus when the registration was abolished, the multiplied election districts were retained. Why ? The answer will be easily furnished from the statements | following. But upon the very face of these modifications of originally honest legislation, is evident the fact that they made the facilities of fraud boundless, and gave to perjury perfect impunity, by rendering detection impossible.

The first division of the various forms of fraud, requiring notice in this memorial, is what may be denominated the irregular, spontaneous illegal voting, always occurring among the vicious, corrupt, and reckless of every party, and sometimes done by thoughtless men, ignorant of the moral character of the offense, and unacquainted with the penalty affixed by the statute which punishes not only the successful act, but even the attempt to deposit an unauthorized ballot. In this way, young men less than twenty-one years of age are often induced to offer their votes. Foreigners not yet naturalized, after having merely received a certificate that they have registered notice of their intention to become citizens at the end of five years, are frequently assured by individuals that they have already acquired a right to vote, and are brought up to the polls, informed on the highest legal authority, that they cannot be compelled to produce their naturalization papers, but may, without showing them, demand the oath of citizenship, and thus are made to commit unintentional perjury. Many American citizens who have not yet acquired a legal residence in the State (one year) or in the County (six months) in times of high excitement, are so far carried away from the recollection of the law and of moral principle, as to vote, either with or without urging—sometimes under oath, but generally only when they pass unsuspected and unchallenged. Legal voters, also who have deposited their ballots at the proper place, and are afterwards wandering about at random, from one district to another, sometimes will, of their own unaided suggestion, offer their votes at various polls, and if successful either with or without the oath, will consider the act as a mere joke, a smart thing of no heinously wicked character, and not perilous as to legal penalties. In all these forms of unadvised fraud, the recklessness and moral obtuseness created by the free use of intoxicating liquors at the time, is frequently an incitement and cause extensively mischievous.

These, and other varieties of illegal voting are such as arise simply from |450| individual impulse and action, without system, direction, instruction or pecuniary motive, and without the aid and security of any combination to prevent detection or punishment. They are, therefore, to be carefully distinguished from those which are the product of associated action, preconcerted arrangement, general plan, and partisan organization. They are practiced almost every where, but even in the city are quite insignificant in amount, and seldom effect any change in the grand result. Here they probably seldom exceed a few hundreds or a thousand, including all parties. They are also easily prevented by care, determination, and fidelity in the inspectors and challengers. Though of itself an evil of abstract importance, and giving painful evidence of corruption and want of principle, requiring remedy, yet this voluntary unsystematic crime vanishes from deliberate notice when presented by the side of the stupendous system of crime elsewhere displayed.

The second division of frauds on the ballot includes the whole scheme of unlawful action on the elective power, by party organization or by general direction or plan of any description. In this portion of the subject, however, occurs an essential distinction, and a classification, practical in its character, historical in designation. This is—the distinction between the old plan and the new plan of fraud,—which are the terms familiarly applied to them in the secret councils of their authors and agents.

The old plan consists of a variety of measures regularly put in operation at every important election before the passage of the Registry law—checked and partially suspended during the brief continuance of that Act, and resumed with great extensions, upon its repeal. Many of the contrivances are of very early origin and long-tried experiment, the date of their invention indeed being at this period a matter of merely traditional knowledge, having come down from “a time to which the memory of” politicians “runneth not contrary.”

The first measure adopted under this plan is to bring to the polls every man in the city at the time, who can be induced to vote their ticket, without possessing the legal qualifications of residence, citizenship, age, &c. All the legal voters of that party invariably present themselves with their ballots on election-day, without any necessity for effort to bring | out their legitimate force. The second is to bring in persons from other counties and States, for the express purpose of giving illegal votes at a particular election, returning to their own homes immediately afterwards. The third is the fraudulent naturalization of foreigners under the instigation and management of a regularly constituted Committee or Association of the party, by whose contrivance many foreigners, ignorant of the requirements of the law and sometimes even of the language of the country, are brought into the courts and are made to testify and swear—they know not what, in a great number of instances—all fees and charges being paid by those who direct the fraud. To bring to the polls all who can be induced to vote under oath upon a mere certificate of having given notice of intentions to be naturalized at the future completion of the legal five years’ residence, is another form of this measure. The fourth measure is to procure and hire persons to go from one election district to another and deposit their illegal ballots as many times as possible in the course of the day, “swearing them in” whenever challenged. The great number of voting-places established in the city under the new law, (seventy-nine in all,) has rendered totally unnecessary an expedient used when there was but one in each Ward, (amounting to only seventeen in the whole city,) when systematic disguises were adopted and men were sedulously trained to assume with a variety of dresses, a corresponding change of look, voice, action, walk and manner, to enable them to vote many different times in one day at the same place, without risk of detection or suspicion. The retention of the increased number of the election districts, when the vital clauses of the Registry law were repealed, was therefore a great saving of expense, labor and care on the part of those who managed this business. Disguises are still sometimes assumed, but generally rather from taste than from any necessity in order to avoid risk.

These measures, it will be observed, were all directed to the increase of the vote of the party directing them. Another important measure, productive often of very great effect on the result, was the diminution of the vote of the opposing party by various means. Whenever they had the power of locating the polls, they studiously placed them, in every possible instance, in the most disagreeable and |451| inaccessible situations, where the vicinity furnished the greatest facilities for riot and disturbance, and for creating annoyances which were likely to disgust the more respectable or aged voters so far as to keep many of them away from the ballot-boxes. Organized bands of notorious ruffians and pugilists were also, in many districts, employed by them to obstruct the polls, to create tumults, to alarm the timid and bully the peaceable, and often to molest, insult and assault unoffending voters of opposite sentiments. By these and many other annoyances, many hundreds of lawful votes were often kept out of the ballot-boxes.

By all these agencies of fraud, imposition and violence, an enormous difference in the vote was uniformly created ; and in the great majority of instances, this was done with success, through a long course of years, completely reversing the veritable decision of the people at many elections, and rendering futile and null the whole principle of the republican system,—the actual majority being subjugated and governed by a minority composed of the most ignorant, vicious and desperate portion of society, constituting the basest tyranny ever known to the civilized world. The registry law, though presenting many obstacles to the successful and easy operation of this system of iniquity, still was far from an absolute prevention of the evil. That law could not execute itself. It only created the means and the necessity of action against fraud—action not merely on the part of the authorized agents of the law, but also on the part of good citizens generally. Without the continual exercise of determined vigilance and energy by hundreds of active, experienced politicians, the register of electors was continually liable to be loaded with thousands of spurious names, and with those of obscure non-residents who could crowd their pretended places of abode in the populous filthy sections of the city on the eve of an election, and disappear as soon as their appointed work was done. There was hardly one variety of fraud that could not still be freely perpetrated under that law, unless the most rigid inspection and purgation of the list was constantly secured by organized action. It was but an accession to the preexisting resources of the voluntary system of prevention. This was often neglected during the existence of the registration. The stringent arrangements for watching and | guarding the polls which should have been still enforced, were relaxed ; and the old system of fraud, acquiring new and ingenious modifications by the exercise of invention to evade the statute, was enlarged and strengthened in consequence.

Of all these statements, a most intelligible proof, a vivid illustration and a practical exemplification can be summarily exhibited, by a reference to the statistics of the second charter election which was held here after the repeal of the Registry Law.

In April, 1843, the annual contest for the local government of the City of New York was renewed, with no more than ordinary interest and activity. The party then in possession of the actual power of the Corporation, though not of the Mayoralty, presented as their candidate for the chief office, “a man of the people,” an intelligent, well-informed, upright, prosperous mechanic, then representing the city in the State legislature, and previously nominated by his party for high and responsible offices, and an incumbent of several of them. The mechanical class, or a portion of them, made a special effort to elect him, as a representative of their peculiar political claims and interests. The opposing candidate, at that time the incumbent, had the unanimous support of his own party, and was also favored by many who were wholly indifferent to politics, and by a few actually pretending to be of the other party, on the ground of supposed qualifications as a vigorous and vigilant magistrate ; though he was a specially odious and obnoxious politician, a most unscrupulous and desperate partisan, recklessly abusing power and perverting justice for factious ends, and neglecting duty when the enforcement of the law would have secured the just protection of those whose rights were above all party claims.

Between these two candidates and those severally associated with them, the contest might have been a close one, if limited to the lawful votes of those who came to the polls. The abandonment of duty by a large portion of one party, from dissatisfaction with their position in national politics, and the open desertion of another portion to the enemy, was partly compensated by the rally of the mechanical orders around their own peculiar accepted candidate. But the variation of losses and gains left both parties unusually near an equipoise. Not sufficiently informed as to the effect and |452| extent of certain feelings between various classes and employments, suddenly invoked from a quarter whence such calls were unusual, the party of organized fraud brought all their resources of crime to bear on that contest, and with results startling and even appalling to the most hardened among their experienced directors of imposition. The repeal of the Registry Law, retaining the multiplication of election districts (79 instead of 17) had given facility to long smothered devices of fraud, and security to new forms of crime, beyond the conception of many who had grown old and respectable in these violations of the laws of God and man. The sudden removal of all obstacles to fraud had given an impulse to villany which the masters of that art could not appreciate. Fraud and perjury acquired in a few hours an impetus which, unchecked by the pretense of opposition, could not be restrained or moderated even by friendly interference.

The plans of those who ordered the movements of the party on that horrid day, were undoubtedly limited to the expected exigency. The entire force of their opponents might be reasonably estimated (after all subtractions for national and local schisms,) at about 20,000. In this case, mere success, not ostentation of supposed force, was the object ; and a majority of 1,000 was considered sufficient for all practical purposes, if so distributed among the several Wards as to secure the command of both Boards of the Common Council. Surplus majorities are no part of their policy. The expense is a matter of some consideration ; and a small majority is wisely deemed better in general than one which arouses suspicion and indignant denunciation of fraud.

In this particular case, the result outran these prudential considerations, partly from an over-estimate of the opposing force, and partly from the ease and security with which the subordinate agents found themselves gliding along in their movements of fraud. Few or no obstacles were presented. Challengers were few, or unfaithful and negligent, or were overawed and silenced by displays of violence. In the fifth district of the Sixteenth Ward, and in the second district of the Twelfth Ward, organized and paid bands of rioters, made brutal and bloody assaults upon peaceable voters, and afterwards upon the police when they attempted to preserve order. Many unoffending | persons were seriously wounded, and two almost murdered. The Common Council, discrediting warnings previously given, had made no efficient provision for maintaining the peace of the city and preventing fraud. The result was an apparent majority of 6,000, obtained by these means—including more than 7,000 deliberate false oaths. The darkest day that ever rose on Gomorrah never set on so much heaven-daring crime against God and man, as made up the dread account of this Christian city within those few hours.

The fact was conceded by those who committed it—by a few with boasting,—by some with jesting, but by many with confessed alarm. There was no triumph—no shouting for the victory—no parade of trophies. The processions, ensigns, peals of ordnance, with which that party were invariably wont to announce their sense of their success, were omitted in silence. A subdued and fearful tone pervaded all the organs of the victors ; and the wrath of the vanquished was deprecated as though the power of reversing the result were yet theirs. A public investigation and exposure would have justified a revolution in defence of the rights of the electoral body against a minority coming into power by means so subversive of republican government. Individual inquiry was made, and facts were ascertained, exceeding previous suspicion. Apathy, jealousy, and viler motives prevented the co-operation necessary to complete success. The whole mass of the beaten party returned to their usual indifference to politics, in a few hours after the result of the election was announced—caring nothing for the particulars of the mode in which their defeat was effected. But there were a faithful, watchful few, who shuddered at the products of their search into those causes and means—whose foreboding hearts felt in those discoveries the awful portents of similar results in another and more eventful strife, when the destiny of the nation, the age, the world, should depend on the ballot of this one city. Unaided, derided, and abandoned by those who had the knowledge of the crime and the power of detecting it—unable to sympathize with the guilty indifference and contempt which thus abetted the treason, they could only reserve and store the facts obtained, for the prevention of the same outrages in coming contests, momentous and universal in interest.

|453| The republican of the ages of classic heathenism, in horror of such crimes against that universal sanction of human testimony and law, the solemn adjuration of the powers invisible and eternal, perverted by hideous conspiracy to the destruction of the sacred safeguards of liberty and justice, would have imprecated on the perjured betrayers of his country, the wrath of its tutelar deities, and would, by the sable offering and mystic rite, have evoked the infernal Jove, avenger of violated oaths, with the merciless Eumenides, and all the Stygian train. The Christian freeman, | helplessly beholding the dreadful prodigies of modern crime, could but stand still, and wait in faith to see the judgments of the people’s Eternal King and Divine Protector, who “will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain ;” commending the perjurers and their silent, indolent, indifferent abettors—alike and together, to the slow but certain justice of GOD THE AVENGER.

[The details of the New Plan of fraud, and its operations and effects in the Elections of 1844, will be given in the next number of the American Review.]