The people will meet in the PARK, rain or shine, at four o'clock on
MONDAY AFTERNOON,
to inquire into the cause of the present unexampled distress, and to devise a suitable remedy. All friends of humanity, determined to resist monopolists and extortioners, are invited to attend.
Moses Jacques. Daniel Graham. Paulus Hedle. John Windt. Daniel A. Robertson. Alexander Ming, Jr. Warden Hayward. Elijah F. Crane.
NEW YORK, Feb. 10th, 1837.
The idle crowd had all day Sunday to talk over this call. Everywhere knots of men were seen gathered before these placards—some spelling out slowly, and with great difficulty, the words for themselves—others reading the call to those unable to read it. The groggeries were filled with excited men, talking over the meeting, and interspersing their oaths with copious draughts of liquor, and threatening openly to teach these rich oppressors a lesson they would not soon forget.
There was something ominous in the hour selected for the meeting; four o'clock in February meant night, before it would get under full headway. It was evident that the leaders did not mean the meeting to be one of mere speech-making. They knew that under cover of darkness, men could be incited to do what in broad daylight they would be afraid to undertake.
Before the time appointed, a crowd began to assemble, the character of which boded no good. Dirty, ragged, and rough-looking, as they flowed from different quarters together into the inclosure, those who composed it were evidently a mob already made to hand.
At length, four or five thousand shivering wretches were gathered in front of the City Hall. Moses Jacques, a man who would make a good French Communist to-day, was chosen chairman. But this motley multitude had no idea or respect for order, or regular proceedings, and they broke up into different groups, each pushing forward its favorite orator.
One of the strangest freaks of this meeting, was an address to a collection of Democrats by Alexander Ming, Jr. He forgot all about the object of the meeting, and being a strong Bentonian, launched out into the currency question, attributing all the evils of the Republic, past, present, and to come, to the issue of bank-notes; and advising his hearers to refuse to take the trash altogether, and receive nothing but specie. This was the more comical, as not one out of ten of the poor wretches he addressed had the chance to refuse either. Half starving, they would have been glad to receive anything in the shape of money that would help them through the hard winter. Yet when Mr. Ming offered a resolution, proposing a memorial to the Legislature, requiring a law to be passed, forbidding any bank to issue a note under the denomination of a hundred dollars, the deluded people, who had been listening with gaping mouths, rent the air with acclamations. It was a curious exhibition of the wisdom of the sovereign people—this verdict of a ragged mob on the currency question. They were so delighted with this lucid exposition of the cause of the scarcity of flour, that they seized the orator bodily, and elevating him on their shoulders, bore him across the street to Tammany Hall, where something beside specie was received from behind the bar to reward their devotion.