THE WORST TREASON OF ALL.
It will be remarked, somewhat impatiently I fear, by the reader of this long and dismal series of stories of the way in which the municipal Thugs did their deadly work, But where were the citizens? The good honest citizens, we are told, are always in a majority. They proved that they were able to elect their own City Government. Why did they not do it? What is the use of talking about “the land of liberty,” “the Great Republic,” and the Democratic principle, if the richest, oldest, and most highly-educated city in the Western Continent is as impotent to use the ballot-box to protect itself as if it were a city in the dominions of the Great Mogul?
The answer of the Lexow Committee—not by any means a complete answer—is as follows:—
The results of the investigation up to this point may ... be properly summarised in the general statement that it has been conclusively shown that in a very large number of the election districts of New York, almost every conceivable crime against the elective franchise was either committed or permitted by the police, invariably in the interest of the dominant Democratic organisation of the City of New York, commonly called Tammany Hall. The crimes thus committed or permitted by the police may be classified as follows:—
Arrest and brutal treatment of Republican voters, watchers, and workers; open violations of the election laws; canvassing for Tammany Hall candidates; invasion of election booths; forcing of Tammany Hall pasters upon Republican voters; general intimidation of the voters by the police directly and by Tammany Hall election district captains in the presence and with the concurrence of the police; colonisation of voters, illegal registration and repeating, aided and knowingly permitted by the police; denial to Republican voters and election district officers of their legal rights and privileges; co-operation with and acquiescence in the usurpation by Tammany Hall election district captains and watchers of alleged rights and privileges, in violation of law.
In fact, it may be stated as characteristic of the conditions shown to exist by a cloud of witnesses that the police conducted themselves at the several polling places upon the principle that they were there, not as guardians of the public peace to enforce law and order, but for the purpose of acting as agents of Tammany Hall, in securing to the candidates of that organisation by means fair or foul the largest possible majorities. They evidently regarded themselves as coadjutors of that organisation, stationed at the several polls for the purpose of securing its success whether by lawful or unlawful means, resorting to device, oppression, fraud, trickery, crime, and intimidation of almost every conceivable character....—Vol. i., pp. 15, 16.
It is to be regretted that sufficient time was not at the disposal of your Committee to enable it to subject every district in the city to a rigorous examination upon the lines of this branch of inquiry, whereby a more accurate estimate of the effect of police interference might be reached. Sufficient, however, appears upon the record to show beyond peradventure that, owing to the practices above referred to during the years covered by the investigation, honest elections had no existence, in fact, in the City of New York, and that, upon the contrary, a huge conspiracy against the purity of the elective franchise was connived at and participated in by the municipal police, whereby the rights and privileges of the individual were trampled ruthlessly under foot, and crime against the ballot held high carnival.—Vol. i., p. 17.
The date of this Report, be it remembered, was January 15th, 1895. It may be supplemented by a very significant admission made by Mr. Goff, himself a Republican and now Recorder of New York. Speaking of the election frauds which he did so much to detect and punish in November, 1893:—
It would not be just to lay the blame exclusively upon the Tammany inspectors, though, of course, being in the majority and in full control, they were chargeable with all that took place. Republican inspectors either openly co-operated with or quietly acquiesced in the perpetration of the fraud.—North American Review, February, 1894, p. 210.
The fraud on the ballot, to which both parties were privy, was all the more abominable because the provisions of the law against such abuses were very strict. But it is a favourite method in other countries than the United States to salve an uneasy conscience by passing a rigorous law without taking any precautions to see that it is carried into operation. This mode of relieving the feelings had been indulged in by New Yorkers in 1890, when the Ballot Reform Act passed into law. But, writing in 1894, Mr. Goff, who was Counsel to the Committee for the Prosecution of Election Frauds, said:—