With power equally distributed among the nations of Europe, there would be no cause for war. Nicholas thinks he can resist all Europe in arms: hence the present war. What mainly preserves the union of the States is the equality of representation of States in the American Senate, through which the reserved rights of the States are chiefly protected. And what will preserve the city of New York from conflagration, and best protect the ballot-box, and promote the best interests of the city, will be for the press to be far less grasping in its desires for universal power, through its advocation of, and its subsequent intimate connection with, the leading officers of dangerous political organizations, which must ultimately result in their absorption of the right of suffrage, and perhaps in the destruction of the city itself. Let the press and the public organizations studiously move in their respective spheres, like the States and the General Government,—a serious collision, or too friendly intimacy, being equally fatal to both, and to all concerned.
The Press has power enough, and quite as much as the people can safely allow them. The public corporations have more power than is consistent with the public safety, and the purity and exercise of the elective franchise. But I repeat, that with a police department, and paid fire department, and other public corporations, and the press, all united in a specified object, God have mercy on the city of New York. Farewell, then, to the right of suffrage in this city. The paid firemen and the paid policemen, openly or tacitly sustained by the press, would utterly block up and control the passages leading to the ballot-boxes, permitting (as many of the police do now) only those to vote who could give the countersign. This fearful consolidation of power in the first American city might lead to the most deplorable results to the whole country. We have not existed eighty years as a Republic, which is a very brief period in the silent and trackless footsteps of centuries. The American eagle might fall to-morrow from his projecting cliff, never to rise. Rome ruled, and finally destroyed the Roman Empire. So with Athens and Alexandria, and other ancient cities. Paris, through political organizations, rules France. These associations, controlled by a bold, reckless, and accomplished leader, can make France a republic to-day, and a despotism to-morrow. London, through her public corporations, which were gradually stolen from the people, controls the British empire, on whose vast possessions the sun never sets. And why should not New York, with similar organizations, and controlled by a crafty, irresponsible, unscrupulous, and unbridled press, ultimately reduce the Whole country to despotism and degrading vassalage? Some of our leading and most honorable statesmen will tell you that the city of New York controls the national conventions of either party, and the national politics, through half a dozen bloated political scamps, located in this city and Albany.
Firemen of New York, and other citizens, are you prepared to incur these perils? If not, arise and resist the superhuman efforts to disgrace and destroy you! Grasp and hold with giant strength the little you have left of the right of suffrage;—cling, with undying firmness and affection, to your noble organization; resist the attempts to saddle this tax-ridden city with an additional tax of nearly one million of dollars, for the support of a paid fire department, and avert the possible contingency that some mushroom scoundrel may, at no remote day, haughtily dispense the curses of monarchy or unlimited despotism on the ruins of your country!
A paid fire department, composed of a limited number of hired mercenaries, could not protect this city so effectually as a voluntary system. It could be done in the cities of Europe, where the habitations are composed of bricks, granite, marble, and other substances impervious to fire, but not in New York, where almost every edifice is a pile of shavings, or combustible matter. Moreover, hired civilians are the same as hired soldiers. Both work for pay, and not for public utility and renown. But the volunteer firemen of New York are as zealous and courageous as the soldiers of the Revolution, while paid firemen would evince the slothfulness and cowardice of the British in that memorable contest. Any man contending for liberty, and his wife and children, can easily rend to fragments three cowardly mercenary combatants, and a volunteer fireman of New York, panting for deeds of valor, and the love and respect of his fellow men, can effect more than half a dozen paid lazzaroni, who go to their perilous task as slaves go to the field.
For years the press of New York has disgusted and insulted the firemen, by striving to make the people believe that the police were more efficient at fires than the firemen; and most of these puffs are written at Matsell’s and the Captains’ offices. We now begin to see the motive of this, which was two-fold. First, to make the police system popular with the people—and it has required an immense deal of puffing to make it even tolerable with the people. And, secondly, to prepare the people for another police organization in the form of a paid fire department. We shall not recur to the past, but will recur to the future files of the press, and we will venture the prediction that, ere many days, it will be publicly announced that poor Matsell has either broken his thigh at a fire, or had his coat burned entirely from his back, or that he has saved the lives of seventy-five policemen, by ordering them down stairs just as the fatal crash was about to come; or, fancying himself Chief Engineer, he has actually struck a general alarm, as in Forsyth street. Or it may be announced that Captains Brennan, Leonard, or some other daring policemen, have quenched a tolerably large conflagration before the firemen arrived; and that, at the same terrific fire, they saved the lives of several men, women, and children, at the imminent risk of losing their own valuable lives.
This base stuff, and these monstrous lies, which daily fill the columns of the Press, concocted by the Police Department as early and valuable news, may have rendered the Police Department a little more tolerable with the people, but, at the same time, it has created a breach and a deadly hatred between the policemen and the firemen that will not be effaced while the present race of editors shall exist. And if they would atone for the mischief they have thus created, and would have more friendly relations subsist between the Police and Fire Departments, the sooner they stop such disgusting nonsense the better for them, and for the city at large.
Stephen H. Branch.
May 14, 1854.
And now, firemen, be vigilant, or you are lost. You are surrounded by spies and internal foes, who talk in favor of the Volunteer System, and yet in ambush are toiling unceasingly against it. The Fire Department swarms with these hypocrites, who are mostly politicians, and employed to stab your Volunteer System by the chief robbers of the politicians, who desire to strangle the rights of the people, and rob and oppress them with taxation, through two such overshadowing political organizations as the Fire and Police Departments.