Edmund Burke, regarded by many as the greatest orator
of all times, conducted the case against Warren Hastings
in that renowned trial which lasted years, and which
promises to keep its renown for centuries to come.
I wish to quote some of the things he said.
I wish to imagine him arraigning Mr. Croker and Tammany
before the voters of New York City and pleading with
them for the overthrow of that combined iniquity of
the 5th of November, and will substitute for “My
Lords,” read “Fellow-Citizens”;
for “Kingdom,” read “City”;
for “Parliamentary Process,” read “Political
Campaign”; for “Two Houses,” read
“Two Parties,” and so it reads:
“Fellow—citizens, I must look upon
it as an auspicious circumstance to this cause, in
which the honor of the city is involved, that from
the first commencement of our political campaign to
this the hour of solemn trial not the smallest difference
of opinion has arisen, between the two parties.
“You will see, in the progress of this cause,
that there is not only a long, connected, systematic
series of misdemeanors, but an equally connected system
of maxims and principles invented to justify them.
Upon both of these you must judge.
“It is not only the interest of the city of
New York, now the most considerable part of the city
of the Americans, which is concerned, but the credit
and honor of the nation itself will be decided by this
decision.”
At
a later meeting of the Acorn Club, Mr. Clemens said:
Tammany is dead, and there’s no use in blackguarding
a corpse.
The election makes me think of a story of a man who
was dying. He had only two minutes to live,
so he sent for a clergyman and asked him, “Where
is the best place to go to?” He was undecided
about it. So the minister told him that each
place had its advantages—heaven for climate,
and hell for society.
Addressat the city club dinner, January
4,1901
Bishop Potter told how an alleged
representative of Tammany Hall asked him
in effect if he would cease his warfare upon the Police
Department if a certain captain and inspector were
dismissed. He replied that he would
never be satisfied until the “man
at the top” and the “system” which
permitted evils in the Police Department
were crushed.
The Bishop has just spoken of a condition of things
which none of us can deny, and which ought not to
exist; that is, the lust of gain—a lust
which does not stop short of the penitentiary or the
jail to accomplish its ends. But we may be sure
of one thing, and that is that this sort of thing
is not universal. If it were, this country would
not be. You may put this down as a fact:
that out of every fifty men, forty-nine are clean.
Then why is it, you may ask, that the forty-nine don’t
have things the way they want them? I’ll
tell you why it is. A good deal has been said
here to-night about what is to be accomplished by organization.
That’s just the thing. It’s because
the fiftieth fellow and his pals are organized and
the other forty-nine are not that the dirty one rubs
it into the clean fellows every time.
