Let Dad and Son Beware!
Peter Cooper and Mayor Tiemann are old and sacred friends of George W. Matsell, who are more familiar with each other than they are with the Bible, or morning and evening prayers. Mayor Tiemann was elected with the express condition that Matsell should be restored to his old position, and Peter Cooper and Mayor Tiemann, and James W. Gerard, and Ambrose C. Kingsland are at work for their lives to effect the restoration of Matsell, and all impends on the election of a Commissioner in place of the noble Perrit. Matsell was in the city at the last Mayoralty election, conspiring against Wood, who saved him from the scaffold, after we convicted him of alienage and perjury, and the dastard and sacrilegious abjuration of his country. And at the late election, he stabbed his benefactor down in the dust, in the assassin’s darkness, and did not play Brutus for the public virtue, but to consummate his restoration to an office (he had always degraded) which was in the contract between himself and Cooper, Tiemann, Gerard, and Kingsland, and other slavish friends. We know them all and the rendezvous of all their kindred Diavolos, whose names would fill the jaws of the Alligator. Matsell professed to enter the city from Iowa with flags and music on the day after Tiemann’s election, but he was in the city long before, and concealed in as dark a cavern as the odious Cataline, while conspiring to foil the patriotic Cicero, and consign the eternal city to a million thieves. And we now warn Cooper, Tiemann, Gerard, and Kingsland to beware. For if they foist Matsell on the city through the purchase of Nye or Bowen with Mayoralty, Street Commissioner, or the pap of the Mayor’s Executive vassals, we will make disclosures that will make them stare like affrighted cats, (Gerard a la he-cat, and the others a la she-cats,) and rock the city to its carbonic entrails. Talmadge must remain, although he annoyed his nurse and mother when a brat, and so did we; and in boyhood and early manhood we both had worms, and raised Sancho Panza,
And we rambled around the town,
And saw perhaps Miss Julia Brown,
as we may develop in the publication of our funny reminiscences; but we are both growing old, and told our experience at the recent revival, and asked admission as pious pilgrims, when the deacons said that we should both be put on five year’s trial, but we begged so hard they let us in. Talmadge joined the Presbyterians, and he looks pale and pensive, but we joined the noisy Methodists, and look mighty cheerful, and sing and dance, and scream like the devil in delirium tremens, and nervous neighbors murmur at our thundering methodistic demonstrations. Talmadge as Recorder was too kind and lenient, but he erred on the side of humanity, which is preferable to err on the side of a pale and icy and bloodless liver, though we should steer between the heart and liver, and consign the culprits to the pits and gulches of the navel, where the voracious worms could soon devour them. The valor of Talmadge conquered the ruffians of Astor Place, and he has a Roman and Spartan nature, and is as generous and magnanimous as Clay or Webster, whom he loved as his own big heart. No man ever had a more genial or sympathising bosom, than Frederick A. Talmadge. And William Curtis Noyes married his favorite daughter, and while, the spotless Noyes walks the velvet earth, and his father-in-law is Chief of Police, all will go well. Wm. Curtis Noyes is one of the ablest jurists of our country, and Washington himself had no purer, nor warmer, nor more patriotic heart. We selected Mr. Noyes as our counsel against little Georgy Matsell, when arraigned before the Police Commissioners, and to his ability and fidelity are New Yorkers profoundly indebted for the downfall of Matsell, and the worst and most formidable banditti that ever scourged the Western Continent. Beware, then, Cooper Tiemann, Gerard and Kingsland, and other trembling conspirators, or we will make you howl, and open the gates of Tartarus, and set a million dogs and devils at your heels, and when they bite, may God have mercy on your poor old bones. Beware, or we will harrow your superannuated souls into the realms of Pluto, where Robert le Diable will grab and burn you in liquid brimstone, through exhaustless years. Beware of those forty pages yet behind. O, beware, we implore you, in the name of your wives and children, and your God! Beware of Matsell and his gang, as the big and little demons of these wicked times.
Advents and Public Plunderers.
Richard B. Connolly, the County Clerk, was born in Bandon, Ireland, and arrived in Philadelphia twenty-five years since, (as his glib, and slippery, and truthful tongue asseverates,) and thence immigrated to our metropolis. He became Simeon Draper’s Friday clerk, who taught him the politician’s creed of plunder, and has ever used him as a spy in the democratic legions. Draper got him in the Customs, and kept him there through several Administrations. Draper and Connolly long controlled the Ten Governors, and do now. Draper has been in all camps, and Connolly has figured in democratic conventions, primary and legal, of all stripes and checks, through which he acquired the immortal name of Slippery. Dick is an alien, and offered us between the pillars of Plunder Hall a lucrative position in the office of County Clerk, and also proposed to play Judas against Matsell, if we would not expose his perjured alienage. We had three interviews, when we assured him that we despised both treason and traitor. He then got Alderman John Kelly to read a letter in the Board of Aldermen, declaring that he was naturalized in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, whither we repaired, and got certificates from the clerks, declaring that he was never naturalized in Philadelphia, which we published in the New York Daily Times. In his Aldermanic letter, he declared that his document of naturalization was framed, which he regarded as his most valuable piece of furniture, and cordially invited his friends and the incredulous to call and behold its graceful decoration of his parlor. The gallant Alderman John H. Briggs, (the Putnam of the Americans, who braved and defied all the thieves, and murderers, and demons of hell in the Matsell campaign,) called to see Dick’s valuable gem of furniture, but he could not find it on the wall, nor elsewhere. We then called, and Dick’s wife told us it was locked in a trunk, and her husband had the key. Others called, with similar success. On his election as County Clerk, Dick and Draper got a law enacted at Albany, giving the County Clerk $50,000 fees, which was just so much stolen from the people, whom the Municipal, State and National robbers will not let live, but strive to rob them of their last crumb, and drive them into the winter air. Public plunder is devoted to greasing the political wheels, and burnishing, and twitching the mysterious wires, through which the honest laborer is burdened with taxes, that mangle his back like the last feather of the expiring camel. Connolly, Busteed, Doane, Wetmore, Nathan, Nelson, Draper, and Weed, got the Record Commissioners appointed, through which $550,000 have been squandered for printing the useless County Clerk and Register’s Records, which is the boldest robbery of modern times. We never could induce Greeley, Bryant, Webb’s Secretary, the Halls, and others, to breathe a word against this Dev-lin-ish plunder. And Flagg, himself, through his old printing friends, Bowne & Hasbrouck, and others, is involved in this record robbery up to his chin, who never uttered a syllable against it, until we goaded him through our crimson dissection in the Daily Times, and even then he only damned it with Iago praise. Since July last, Flagg has paid more than $300,000 for Record printing, for which, old as he is, he should be consigned to a sunless dungeon, and rot there, with spiders only for his nurses and mourners. Last summer Flagg told us there never was a more wicked band of robbers than the Record Commissioners, and yet he paid them from July to December the prodigious sum of over $300,000, and had paid them more than $200,000. And Flagg paid this enormous sum without a murmur, and has no possible facility to place the infamy on the scapegoat Smith, who seems to roam at large unmolested by Flagg, who yet fears Smith’s disclosures of his delinquency and superannuation. Flagg sputters a little in his reports, for show, against him, but he is not chasing Smith very hotly in the Courts, nor dare he, as we have good reason to believe. Through the Alms House, Navy Yard, County Clerks’ Office, Record Commissioners, metropolitan and suburban lots, and other plundering sources, Connolly has amassed a fortune of nearly a million of dollars, and now has the audacity to proclaim himself a candidate for Comptroller, at which the honorable citizens of New York should rise and paralyse his infamous effrontery. Not content with indolence all his days,—with robbing the laborer and mechanic, and merchant, and widow, and orphan, for whom he professes such boundless love, through his spurious and mercenary democracy,—with corrupting the ballot box, and packing juries, to imprison and hang us according to his caprice and public or private interest,—with the election of Mayors and other municipal and even State and National officers, through his fraudulent canvass of votes as County Clerk,—and with his awful perjury in connection with his alienage, he now appears with his stolen money bags, and proclaims himself a candidate for Comptroller, for which he should be lashed, and scourged, and probed to his marrow bones, through the streets of New York, beneath the glare of the meridian sun, and the gaze and withering scorn of every honorable and industrious citizen, whom he has robbed, through intolerable taxation. Connolly has not voted since we exposed his perjured alienage in 1855, when he strove to bribe us to shield him from the odium arising from his alienage. A public thief, and perjurer, and alien, this man or devil announces himself for Comptroller of this mighty metropolis, with a prospect of nomination and election, unless his throat is cut by George H. Purser, a deeper and more dangerous public villain than Connolly. Purser has robbed this city for a quarter of a century, and is also an unnaturalised alien, and we have positive evidence of the fact, and he knows it. His corrupt lobby operations in the Common Council and at Albany would make a large volume. And both Connolly and Purser are nauseous scabs of the Democratic party, and grossly pollute the glorious principles of Jefferson and Jackson. And now, where, in the name of God, are the people, or is there no spirit and integrity, and patriotism, and courage, to resist the infernal public thieves of this vandal age? Should the people slumber when a gang of robbers, and devils, and assassins, and fiends of rapine, are thundering at the gates of the commercial emporium, and even at the very doors and firesides of our sacred domestic castles, and daily and hourly rob our coffers, and ravish our daughters, and cut our throats, in open day, and through their hellish robbery, and taxation, drive the mechanic and laborer, and their dear little ones, to hunger, and rags, and madness, and crime, and to the dungeon, or scaffold, or suicide? Where is the concert of action of Boston and Providence, and throughout New England? And where are the pomatum villains of our aristocratic avenues, in this solemn hour? They are in league with your Greeleys, and Bryants, and Webbs, and Wetmores, and Drapers, and Connollys, and Pursers, and Devlins, and Smiths, and Erbens, devising schemes to plunder the people here, at Albany and Washington, for gilded means to support themselves in idleness and extravagance, and to carry the elections against the gallant Southrons, whose throats they would cut from ear to ear, and deluge this whole land with human blood, ere they would toil a solitary day like the honest laborer or mechanic, or surrender a farthing of their ungodly plunder, or breathe a syllable in favor of the eternal glory of the Union of Washington.