The election of Mr. Van Wyck, the Tammany candidate, as the first Mayor of Greater New York, which has taken place as these pages were passing through the press, is a curious and suggestive comment upon “Satan’s Invisible World Displayed.”
“Ephraim is joined to his idols, let him alone!” has been the reflection of many a reformer on hearing of the immense majority by which the second city in the world elected to place itself under the governance of the elect of Tammany Hall. But the worst of such an attitude is that Ephraim does not leave other people alone, for in his worship of the false gods he brings down disasters upon other heads than his own. The welfare and good government of the first city in America can never be a matter of indifference to the rest of the world.
Tammany Hall seated its candidate by a majority of votes sufficiently decisive. But although Mr. Van Wyck was 85,000 votes ahead of his nearest competitor, he did not poll a majority of the citizens. If the principle of a second ballot which is established on the Continent of Europe had been the law in New York, the issue would have had to be fought out again in a single-handed fight between Mr. Van Wyck and Mr. Seth Low. In default of such a provision, all that can be said is that at the first election of Greater New York Tammany polled 235,000 and the three anti-Tammany candidates 272,000 votes, making a majority against Tammany of 37,000.
If Tammany be as black as it is painted, the worst thing about the election is not the return of Mr. Van Wyck, but the divisions of his opponents. That Tammany should be beloved of her own progeny is nothing. What is serious is that those children of light who see the evil of Tammany rule should treat it as a matter of trivial importance compared with the passion and prejudice of personalities and parties. If good men do not combine when bad men conspire, the inference is very obvious. Either the conspiracy of the bad men is not very bad, or the good men hardly deserve their name.
The familiar saying of Burke that he refused to draw an indictment against a whole nation may be applied to cities as well as to nations. What is clear enough is that Tammany in the past has discredited democracy. It has done so twice in the most conspicuous and unmistakable fashion.
Under Tweed it became a synonym for Thieving. Under Croker’s government the Lexow Report proved it became an organised system of Blackmail.
What is it to be under Mr. Van Wyck?
That is the question which it is for Tammany to decide.
Mr. Croker professed admirable sentiments as to his resolution to make New York the ideal city of the world. Nothing could have been worthy of the man to whom the citizens have entrusted their destiny. We should, however, have had more right to face the future with confidence had Mr. Croker’s contemplation of the past—and such a past—not been quite so complacent.
Nevertheless it is a good rule that which Cardinal Manning laid down for dealing with those who protest that they have been cruelly misjudged by their contemporaries.