their self-respect, as they compare themselves with the distorted images of society which they have formed. Having decided that "there is no virtue extant," they resolve that they are better than others in pretending to none-that they are peculiarly honorable, because they frankly and truly avow their dishonesty. The principles thus formed, suggest and direct a life of adventure, recklessness, frequent dishonesty, vicious indulgence, and unlawful art. They become gamblers, gambling-house keepers, writers and publishers of obscene and licentious books and papers, sham-brokers, Tombs-lawyers," "straw-bail" men, "skinners,"" touchers," professional perjurers, police decoy-ducks and "stoolpigeons," receivers of stolen goods, sharpers, impostors, prize-fighters, mockauctioneers, watch-stuffers, pocket-book droppers, brothel-owners and bullies, cock-fighters, dog-stealers, street beggars, and so on through innumerable grades and inventions of roguery, down to counterfeiters, pickpockets, incendiaries, highway robbers, and burglars. The English language, originally too poor to express all these abominations, has been enriched by the addition of new terms, coined or compounded to represent the novelties of crime in the American metropolis.

All these designated occupations, and more, not here specified, exist in New York, though unknown, even by name, to a large portion of the population. Various as are these forms of villany, they all harmonize in principle and purpose. The actors in these crimes, strong in the consciousness of their numbers and common sympathies, constitute a distinct community, with rules and resources which make them formidable in every relation to the commonwealth, but especially in their power and influence in party politics. To understand their agencies in these movements, it must be noted that there are ranks and classes among them, distinguished from each other by the ordinary varieties of pursuits, associations, means, intelligence, manners, dress, and style of living. Though of one accord in principle, all seeking their own good by the injury of others, they vary in the means of accomplishing their radically evil purposes. The better portion of them (the better because pretend ing to less of worldly honor) seek their bare livelihood in avowed violation of the law of the land, which has its own means of efficient vindication. The worst

and most dangerous portion neither steal nor murder" within the statute." Their crimes are moral, not technical. They take, without rendering an equivalent, their thousands, while the common thief but pilfers in units. The vulgar criminal walks in rags, while they shine in costly apparel and jewelry. The mere pickpocket meets swift and just retribution, and finds a felon's punishment and infamy, and a felon's dishonored grave; but they triumph in wholesale crime, and flaunt their splendid livery of guilt among the noblest and proudest of the great republic. They even sit on the very throne of justice, and dispense its dread revenge on their meaner and more unfortunate associates, who are doomed to evince the terrors of an imperfect law by the sufferings of the prison, the manacle or the gallows. The children of misfortune, who alone are reached by vindictive human justice, are but the creatures, the tools of the children of extravagance and pride, whose more dangerous vices constitute the patronage and countenance of vulgar crime.

The whole class, thus characterized, numbers thousands of citizens of New York-all VOTERS. It has hardly occurred, as yet, to those curious in moral and political statistics, to enumerate this unregistered portion of society. Their numbers, their names, their occupations, have no place in the "business directory" of New York, though their political and social action is felt everywhere. At the head of this great league and community of wickedness, and especially directing the action of the whole in politics, is a body of men commonly known by the term "sporting characters," constituting the aristocracy of roguery. This higher class of adventurers are often found partially disguised under the nominal profession of honorable callings, such as those of brokers, lawyers, occasionally merchants and shopkeepers; and some of them are proprietors, where they have managed their various unlawful gains with pr dence. But all are gamblers, and derive their real profits from the resources of that infamous pursuit. In dress, manners, equipage, and all the externals of life, they are ambitious and ostentatious, often seeking to intrude themselves among the respectable classes of society. They keep fine horses, famous for speed and performances on the " Avenues" and the "Island," driving them in elegantly modeled light vehicles, and compete with

wealthy country gentlemen and sportsmen in the breed of their dogs, in the finish of their guns, and the various apparatus of the sports of the field. Their tastes, amusements, occupations and characters, differ little from those of the profligate, gambling, sporting aristocracy of Britain, the members of the fashionable clubs of the West End of the British metropolis, constituting a large portion of the nobility and gentry, who, placed by hereditary wealth and distinction above the necessity of useful occupation, devote their lives to a laborious competition with coachmen, jockeys, dog-fanciers, blacklegs, prize-fighters, huntsmen and gamekeepers. Proud of this association of character and identity of pursuit, the American" sporting aristocracy" look down upon the honorable portion of their fellow-citizens engaged in the successful, though laborious occupations of the professions, trades, arts and commerce, with very much the same feeling as do the profligate lordlings across the water on the substantial merchants and mechanics of the city of London, and with quite as much real cause for their assumed superiority in the scale of being.

In the gambling houses of Park-Place, Vesey street, Broadway, &c., on all the great race-courses, often at the fashionable watering-places and summer resorts, at the concourse of political adventurers around the great seats of legislation, these characters are to be found exercising their gifts, and gratifying their fancies for pleasure or display-entrapping their victims, the heirs of great estates, or weak men, suddenly raised by speculation or other accident, to the possession of wealth. But these occupations, parades and pastimes, are secondary to their main business, and merely serve to fill the intervals of a more important series of engagements. To these gambling gentry, the great game is POLITICS. In its splendid combination of chances and boundless facilities for cheating, imposture and trickery, they see a worthy field for the exercise of their peculiar arts; and they enter it with a cool confidence in their own possession of the needful qualifications for success in it, which places them beyond the competition of those less versed and experienced in corrupt human nature, less familiar with the agencies of fraud and crime, or less unscrupulous about their employment for such purposes.

The larger portion of this class of men, hardened and chilled by their manner of life-with native sympathies and generous impulses destroyed, and with passions schooled into conformity to the most effectual means of their own gratification--regard the ordinary contests of political parties with as little interest in the 'pending issues, as they would feel in the ultimate prosperity of any corporation in whose stock they might speculate for a time, merely to transfer it to some incautious purchaser who might be induced to take it at more than its true value. Such, in the abstract, would always be their view of partisan strifes, holding themselves supremely indifferent to any circumstance but the chance of securing large gains by heavy odds in their favor on the results. BETTING ON ELECTIONS is with them a study, or trade, or craft, the most important branch of their regular business; and the mode of securing gain to themselves is the same as in those manipulations of cards and dice which to the dupe only are games of chance, while to the practiced cheat they truly are games of SKILL. Thus they play in politics, where the ballot is the die, and the voter is the card. They play at THIS game also with "loaded dice" and "MARKED cards." And whenever they enter into the business of elections with money staked upon the result, they proceed with as much confidence in the production of the majorities on which their winnings depend, as they do in their gambling-houses, where all the supposed chances of the faro-table, the roulette, the rouge et noir, the dice-box, the cut, the shuffle and the deal, are converted, by their knavish arts, and secret marks, and mechanical contrivances, into positive certainties of fraudulent gain.

The recent developments of Mr. Green, the reformed gambler, in his various public lectures and communications on this subject, have made these illustrations sufficiently intelligible, and furnish abundant evidence of the universal dishonesty of the whole gamester-craft and profession.

Yet these men are not so artificial and impartial as to be totally without opinions and preferences in politics. The political bias of the whole class is instinctive towards that party which seeks power by patronizing crime, encouraging and defending lawlessness, violence and fraud, and which abuses the possession of power to reward, patronize and promote the

evil agencies which secure its success, the party which appeals continually to the envy and prejudice of the poor against the rich,-which wars against the interests of business men," and against that policy of credit and protection by which are secured the rewards of enterprise, honesty, thrift and industry. Did every man in that community of crime act according to the principles and instincts of his caste, there would not be an exception to the universal application of the rule by which their associations in party politics are determined. But there are among them some, who, though identified with them in disregard of public opinion and the moral sense of respectable society, in irregular and adventurous lives and in depraved and sensual tastes, have yet some remains of an originally better nature about them, some dash of the heroic in their perverted spirit, some sentiment of true manly honor among those artificial notions of it which they share with desperadoes and outlaws. There are a few such, who, however degraded in principle and darkened in moral perception, refuse to follow the bent of their order in politics, and who, though indifferent on ordinary party questions, do occasionally act with those that seek to honor the honorable, and discard fraud and falsehood from their schemes and policy.

Though there is not one in a hundred of the sporting class" who can claim this exemption, yet it should be regarded in a statement designed as this is to be exact in every particular. There are not known to be ten-it is hardly possible that there are twenty--of the gambling fraternity who differ from their associates in their political sentiments; and these are consequently excluded from familiarity with the details of their political

action.

There are also many hangers-on, occasional associates, dupes or pupils of the tribe, sons of respectable or wealthy people, falsely ambitious and dashing young "business men," who frequent gamblinghouses and similar dens of roguery and vice, but have neither experience, sense nor desperation to make them anything more than "honorary" members of the order, or to admit them to the mysteries of the craft. There are many thriving merchants, brokers, professional men, shipmasters and others of various respectable pursuits, including some from the country, occasionally here mingling with

these licentious banditti,-ambitious and even vain of association with them, but alien from their sympathies, and elevated above them in opportunities of gain without the plea of necessity for lawless adventure and infamous occupation. Totally independent of all these volunteers, both in counsel and action, are the class before described. Occasional but rare personal sympathies of character and habit render permanent their connection with these incidental associates; but, in general, these are but their subjects and victims.

The characteristics of these different social classes embody the hidden elements of political principle and power-the secret of American political history. In the class of the adventurous, the vicious, the desperate, the lawless, the criminalis found a unity of feeling and purpose, which pervades the whole in their moral association, without reference to accidental and often temporary and transient differences in rank, situation, and means of comfort, pleasure or display. Through all these widely-variant grades of villany,

from the aristocratic gambler and farobanker in Park Place or Vesey street, down to the copper-tossing ragged vagrant of Corlaer's Hook, the occasional inmate of Blackwell's Island and the brothel-bully and "toucher" of the Five Points or West Broadway, there extends a wondrous social sympathy, a conscious harmony of purpose and electric unity of action, not more fearful in aspect than woful in experiment to the honest, industrious, peaceful portion of society. Strong in this Masonic fellowship and secret mutual aid in violation of the public laws and morals, they fear not to attempt any crime, however startling to the popular apprehension, and however audacious in its defiance of municipal agencies of justice. The murder of the wretched Corlies on the most frequented corner of Broadway at the most stirring hour of the evening, only two years ago, was not effected without the deliberate premeditation and coöperation of a large body of this very class of men, who did not hesitate afterwards publicly to avow their approval of the crime and their resolution to screen the perpetrators at all hazards. Similar impunity has been enjoyed in other cases even more shocking to the public mind. Who does not know of the horrible case of the murder of Mary Rogers? Her fate was and is NO MYSTERY to some. The author of that hideous, borrible, unnatural butchery of a young

and beautiful female was known then to some officers of justice, and is known now. Hundreds of criminals of that and minor grades are sheltered by the same awful combination of criminal agencies, and are discharged from actual arrest and imprisonment, often without form of trial, by collusions of judicial as well as executive agents in league with the secret community of blood and fraud. They stand to one purpose, and stand by each other in its accomplishment.

With such traits, connections and powers, this class become, in political movements, the lords of the land, the controllers of government, the arbiters of the commonwealth's destiny. That they can be such is evident-that they have been and are such, will soon be shown.

Thus have the industrial and intellectual orders of this community prostrated themselves and their country before the mammon of unrighteousness. Thus have they forgotten and disowned their most sacred rights and duties, and left them to the off-scouring and scum of civilized society. Thus by them "the shield of the mighty was vilely cast away in the midst of the battle." Thus, the interests of the people, unfortunately entrusted to the enterprising and respectable portion of the community, were by them betrayed in the hour of the commonwealth's greatest need, the crisis of peace or war, of order or lawlessness, of the protection or abandonment of the interests of the governed by the government. YES! that very class the self-righteous, self-wise, who most frequently exclaim against the imagined evils of universal suffrage, who so often lament the admission of the poor, the uneducated, the foreign-born, the vicious, and the criminal, to the elective franchise, and who would be glad to see that franchise restricted to themselves, —they, and “ nobody else," have proved themselves unworthy of a freeman's birthright, and incapable of their share of the responsibilities of a republican government. The poor man always

66

votes. The prosperous man basely and indolently neglects this great duty in multiplied instances; and even when he pretends to perform it, often makes it of no good effect, by a variable and equivocating ballot, thrown sometimes for one set of principles and sometimes for another.

Noting these facts and their practical bearing, with an acuteness cultivated by long experience, the adventurous and dissolute establish and defend their position in politics by an unanswerable reference to them: 66 Why permit the policy of the government to be directed for the benefit or protection of those who will neither act for themselves in politics nor second or support those who act and labor for them? Rich and prosperous men, and those devoted to the pursuit of regular traffic, are almost universally selfish, narrow-minded, ungrateful, uncharitable. By the possession of these very traits they acquire their wealth or competence. They are glad to have the less fortunate work for them gratis. They never pay for service rendered, except in cases where the law can compel them. In buying and selling, in employing and paying the laborer, it is their rule to take every advantage,' to get as much more for their merchandise and money than its real value as possible, by misrepresentation, exaction, or the necessities of those who deal with them or labor for them. Men do not grow rich or remain so by generosity, truthfulness, patriotism, or high-minded consideration of the good of others and the common benefit of society. We, however, denounced by them as immoral and dishonest, and excluded from "good society,' are free from many of the vices of trade,' though in our way we may often be less careful to keep within the statute.' We may cheat the world and violate the law of the land, but we never cheat one another as they do, and we never break our own laws nor disregard our rules and pledges of honor among ourselves. We esteem ourselves better gentlemen and better men. The higher classes, the privileged orders, the wouldbe aristocracy of wealth, would wheedle us and use us the day before election, and spurn us the day after."

This is the common sentiment of this desperado class, and is often repeated in language almost identical with this. With these bitter things in their hearts and on their tongues, they take their position and movement in politics, assuming the pow

er abandoned to them by those whose injury and humiliation they seek. In their war on what is sometimes regarded as the patrician order, they are joined and often led by many who, like the betrayers of liberty in Rome, descend from their originally higher associations to obtain power by pandering to the prejudices of the ignorant, base, and vicious. The very language which Publius Clodius and Julius Cæsar, and Marcus Antonius addressed to the populace of Rome, and the artful appeals to envy and prejudice, by which they defeated CICERO, CATO, BRUTUS and CASSIUS, are here faithfully translated day after day, and repeated year after yearwith the same effect,-by those who, in republican America renew the woful experience of republican Rome, and with literal exactness represent the purposes of those who then and thus secured, at the same instant, the triumph and the death of democracy, converting the people's power to the people's ruin. This striking analogy is not confined to the leaders of these movements, their arts of deceit, their language, and their purposes. THE MATERIALS, the INSTRUMENTS, with which the American Clodii work are identical in character and origin with those possessed by their Roman prototypes, who, in the name of "the largest liberty to all men," and with the pretense of " enlarging the area of freedom" by conquest and fraud, enslaved the people, cheated them of their liberties, and deluged half the world with innocent blood.

The Rome which Julius Cæsar ruled numbered not within its walls more human beings than are found on the shores of the great estuaries which surround the Rome of the New World. It had not a tithe of the wealth of New York, even when enriched by the spoils of the conquered Orient. Had that American intellect and enterprise which has here concentrated its mighty energies in the peaceful pursuits of commerce, trade, and useful art, but been directed by other influences in the path of war, by this time the Atlantic republic might have ruled by the sword, that half of the world which it now pervades with its traffic, its inventions in art, its moral influence, and its Christian charities. To the characteristics of its origin does it owe the difference of its destiny. The song of the angels when they descended to announce to men the advent of God incarnate, at the period of the census of the Roman empire in the acme of the second imperial Cæsar's

triumph and power, was "Peace on earth, good will to men." However imperfectly embodied here the spirit of that revelation, no man can reasonably doubt that its influences have been felt, not only in the foundation of the American commonwealth, but in the general direction of the wonderful power which it has here developed in the enterprises of peace. Yet, as has already been shown, the vices of peace have grown and flourished in this nominally Christian community, with a luxuriance equaling, probably surpassing, the vilest forms of depravity under the full influences of ancient heathenism. In the disregard of human life, and the insecurity of the rights of property, in the contempt of a solemn oath, in falsehood, deceit, and hypocrisy, and in numerous other immoralities, republican heathen Rome never gave examples of so abominable a character as New York. The dissolute classes with whom Catiline, Clodius and Antony associated, and whose support they secured in their political movements, in their conspiracies and riots, are reproduced with aggravated characteristics, in the dens of vice and crime which are found throughout this and several other American cities. The vivid pictures of those licentious and dangerous portions of the population of Rome and of their haunts, which are given by Sallust and Cicero, will strongly impress the considerate American reader with the sense of the dangers of like effects from like causes here.

THE MODE and MEANS of the political action of these connected orders of crime in New York City, remain to be detailed. The present law of the State of New York regulating elections furnishes the basis and directs the manner of fraud. In 1840, the Legislature passed an Act relating to the Elections and the Elective Franchise, limited in operation to this city alone, by which the annual State Election in November was confined to one day instead of three, and the various Wards were divided into election-districts, each containing not more than five hundred voters, all being registered as qualified citizens at a fixed period before each election. The public registration of electors in such small sections furnished abundant safeguards against fraud, by giving opportunity and time for a rigid investigation of the legality of every vote by all political parties. The reduction of the time from three days to one, served under the registry also to diminish