autocrat.
Ostensibly the Court of Directors, sitting in London and representing the
vast interests of the stockholders, was supreme in authority over the
Calcutta Great Council, whose membership it appointed and removed at
pleasure, whose policies it dictated, and to whom it conveyed its will in
the form of sovereign commands; but whenever it suited Hastings, he
ignored even that august body’s authority and conducted the mighty
affairs of the British Empire in India to suit his own notions.
At his mercy was the daily bread of every official, every trader, every
clerk, every civil servant, big and little, in the whole huge India
Company’s machine, and the man who hazarded his bread by any failure of
subserviency to the boss lost it.
Now then, let the supreme masters of British India, the giant corporation
of the India Company of London, stand for the voters of the city of New
York; let the Great Council of Calcutta stand for Tammany; let the
corrupt and money-grubbing great hive of serfs which served under the
Indian Tammany’s rod stand for New York Tammany’s serfs; let Warren
Hastings stand for Richard Croker, and it seems to me that the parallel
is exact and complete. And so let us be properly grateful and thank God
and our good luck that we didn’t invent Tammany.
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.
MUNICIPAL CORRUPTION
ADDRESS AT 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