individual impulse and action, without system, direction, instruction or pecuniary motive, and without the aid and security of any combination to prevent detection or punishment. They are, therefore, to be carefully distinguished from those which are the product of associated action, preconcerted arrangement, general plan, and partisan organization. They are practiced almost every where, but even in the city are quite insignificant in amount, and seldom effect any change in the grand result. Here they probably seldom exceed a few hundreds or a thousand, including all parties. They are also easily prevented by care, determination, and fidelity in the inspectors and challengers. Though of itself an evil of abstract importance, and giving painful evidence of corruption and want of principle, requiring remedy, yet this voluntary unsystematic crime vanishes from deliberate notice when presented by the side of the stupendous system of crime elsewhere displayed.

THE SECOND division of frauds on the ballot includes the whole scheme of unlawful action on the elective power, by party organization or by general direction or plan of any description. In this portion of the subject, however, occurs an essential distinction, and a classification, practical in its character, historical in designation. This is the distinction between the OLD PLAN and the NEW PLAN of fraud,-which are the terms familiarly applied to them in the secret councils of their authors and agents.

THE OLD PLAN Consists of a variety of measures regularly put in operation at every important election before the passage of the Registry law-checked and partially suspended during the brief continuance of that Act, and resumed with great extensions, upon its repeal. Many of the contrivances are of very early origin and long-tried experiment, the date of their invention indeed being at this period a matter of merely traditional knowledge, having come down from "a time to which the memory of" politicians "runneth not contrary."

The first measure adopted under this plan is to bring to the polls every man in the city at the time, who can be induced to vote their ticket, without possessing the legal qualifications of residence, citizenship, age, &c. All the legal voters of that party invariably present themselves with their ballots on election-day, without any necessity for effort to bring

out their legitimate force. The second is to bring in persons from other counties and States, for the express purpose of giving illegal votes at a particular election, returning to their own homes immediately afterwards. The third is the fraudulent naturalization of foreigners under the instigation and management of a regularly constituted Committee or Association of the party, by whose contrivance many foreigners, ignorant of the requirements of the law and sometimes even of the language of the country, are brought into the courts and are made to testify and swear-they know not what, in a great number of instances-all fees and charges being paid by those who direct the fraud. To bring to the polls all who can be induced to vote under oath upon a mere certificate of having given notice of intentions to be naturalized at the future completion of the legal five years' residence, is another form of this measure. The fourth measure is to procure and hire persons to go from one election district to another and deposit their illegal ballots as many times as possible in the course of the day, "swearing them in" whenever challenged. great number of voting-places established in the city under the new law, (SEVENTYNINE in all,) has rendered totally unnecessary an expedient used when there was but one in each Ward, (amounting to only SEVENTEEN in the whole city,) when systematic disguises were adopted and men were sedulously trained to assume with a variety of dresses, a corresponding change of look, voice, action, walk and manner, to enable them to vote many dif ferent times in one day at the same place, without risk of detection or suspicion. The retention of the increased number of the election districts, when the vital clauses of the Registry law were repealed, was therefore a great saving of expense, labor and care on the part of those who managed this business. Disguises are still sometimes assumed, but generally rather from taste than from any necessity in order to avoid risk.

The

These measures, it will be observed, were all directed to the increase of the vote of the party directing them. Another important measure, productive often of very great effect on the result, was the diminution of the vote of the opposing party by various means. Whenever they had the power of locating the polls, they studiously placed them, in every possible instance, in the most disagreeable and

inaccessible situations, where the vicinity furnished the greatest facilities for riot and disturbance, and for creating annoyances which were likely to disgust the more respectable or aged voters so far as to keep many of them away from the ballot-boxes. Organized bands of notorious ruffians and pugilists were also, in many districts, employed by them to obstruct the polls, to create tumults, to alarm the timid and bully the peaceable, and often to molest, insult and assault unoffending voters of opposite sentiments. By these and many other annoyances, many hundreds of lawful votes were often kept out of the ballot-boxes.

By all these agencies of fraud, imposition and violence, an enormous difference in the vote was uniformly created; and in the great majority of instances, this was done with success, through a long course of years, completely reversing the veritable decision of the people at many elections, and rendering futile and null the whole principle of the republican system, the actual majority being subjugated and governed by a minority composed of the most ignorant, vicious and desperate portion of society, constituting the basest tyranny ever known to the civilized world. The registry law, though presenting many obstacles to the successful and easy operation of this system of iniquity, still was far from an absolute prevention of the evil. THAT LAW COULD NOT EXECUTE ITSELF. It only created the means and the necessity of action against fraud-action not merely on the part of the authorized agents of the law, but also on the part of good citizens generally. Without the continual exercise of determined vigilance and energy by hundreds of active, experienced politicians, the register of electors was continually liable to be loaded with thousands of spurious names, and with those of obscure non-residents who could crowd their pretended places of abode in the populous filthy sections of the city on the eve of an election, and disappear as soon as their appointed work was done. There was hardly one variety of fraud that could not still be freely perpetrated under that law, unless the most rigid inspection and purgation of the list was constantly secured by organized action. It was but an accession to the preëxisting resources of the voluntary system of prevention. This was often neglected during the existence of the registration. The stringent arrangements for watching and

guarding the polls which should have been still enforced, were relaxed; and the old system of fraud, acquiring new and ingenious modifications by the exercise of invention to evade the statute, was enlarged and strengthened in consequence.

Of all these statements, a most intelligible proof, a vivid illustration and a prac-. tical exemplification can be summarily exhibited, by a reference to the statistics of the second charter election which was held here after the repeal of the Registry Law.

In April, 1843, the annual contest for the local government of the City of New York was renewed, with no more than ordinary interest and activity. The party then in possession of the actual power of the Corporation, though not of the Mayoralty, presented as their candidate for the chief office, "a man of the people," an intelligent, well-informed, upright, prosperous mechanic, then representing the city in the State legislature, and previously nominated by his party for high and responsible offices, and an incumbent of several of them. The mechanical class, or a portion of them, made a special effort to elect him, as a representative of their peculiar political claims and interests. The opposing candidate, at that time the incumbent, had the una nimous support of his own party, and was also favored by many who were wholly indifferent to politics, and by a few actually pretending to be of the other party, on the ground of supposed qualifications as a vigorous and vigilant magistrate; though he was a specially odious and obnoxious politician, a most unscrupulous and desperate partisan, recklessly abusing power and perverting justice for factious ends, and neglecting duty when the enforcement of the law would have secured the just protection of those whose rights were above all party claims.

Between these two candidates and those severally associated with them, the contest might have been a close one, if limited to the lawful votes of those who came to the polls. The abandonment of duty by a large portion of one party, from dissatisfaction with their position in national politics, and the open desertion of another portion to the enemy, was partly compensated by the rally of the mechanical orders around their own peculiar accepted candidate. But the variation of losses and gains left both parties unusually near an equipoise. Not suf ficiently informed as to the effect and

extent of certain feelings between various classes and employments, suddenly invoked from a quarter whence such calls were unusual, the party of organized fraud brought all their resources of crime to bear on that contest, and with results startling and even appalling to the most hardened among their experienced directors of imposition. The repeal of the Registry Law, retaining the multiplication of election districts (79 instead of 17) had given facility to long smothered devices of fraud, and security to new forms of crime, beyond the conception of many who had grown old and respectable in these violations of the laws of God and man. The sudden removal of all obstacles to fraud had given an impulse to villany which the masters of that art could not appreciate. Fraud and perjury acquired in a few hours an impetus which, unchecked by the pretense of opposition, could not be restrained or moderated even by friendly interference.

The plans of those who ordered the movements of the party on that horrid day, were undoubtedly limited to the expected exigency. The entire force of their opponents might be reasonably estimated (after all subtractions for national and local schisms,) at about 20,000. In this case, mere success, not ostenta tion of supposed force, was the object; and a majority of 1,000 was considered sufficient for all practical purposes, if so distributed among the several Wards as to secure the command of both Boards of the Common Council. Surplus majorities are no part of their policy. The expense is a matter of some consideration; and a small majority is wisely deemed better in general than one which arouses suspicion and indignant denunciation of fraud.

In this particular case, the result outran these prudential considerations, part ly from an over-estimate of the opposing force, and partly from the ease and security with which the subordinate agents found themselves gliding along in their movements of fraud. Few or no obstacles were presented. Challengers were few, or unfaithful and negligent, or were overawed and silenced by displays of violence. In the fifth district of the Sixteenth Ward, and in the second district of the Twelfth Ward, organized and paid bands of rioters, made brutal and bloody assaults upon peaceable voters, and afterwards upon the police when they attempted to preserve order. Many un

offending persons were seriously wounded, and two almost murdered. The Common Council, discrediting warnings previously given, had made no efficient provision for maintining the peace of the city and perventing fraud. The result was an apparent majority of 6,000, obtained by these means-including more than 7,000 deliberate false oaths. The darkest day that ever rose on Gomorrah never set on so much heaven-daring crime against God and man, as made up the dread account of this Christian city within those few hours.

The fact was conceded by those who committed it-by a few with boasting,by some with jesting, but by many with confessed alarm. There was no triumphno shouting for the victory-no parade of trophies. The processions, ensigns, peals of ordnance, with which that party were invariably wont to announce their sense of their success, were omitted in silence. A subdued and fearful tone pervaded all the organs of the victors; and the wrath of the vanquished was deprecated as though the power of reversing the result were yet theirs. A public investigation and exposure would have justified a revolution in defence of the rights of the electoral body against a minority coming into power by means so subversive of republican government. Individual inquiry was made, and facts were ascertained, exceeding previous suspicion. Apathy, jealousy, and viler motives prevented the co-operation necessary to complete success. The whole mass of the beaten party returned to their usual indifference to politics, in a few hours after the result of the election was announced-caring nothing for the particulars of the mode in which their defeat was effected. But there were a faithful, watchful few, who shuddered at the products of their search into those causes and means-whose foreboding hearts felt in those discoveries the awful portents of similar results in another and more eventful strife, when the destiny of the nation, the age, the world, should depend on the ballot of this one city. Unaided, derided, and abandoned by those who had the knowledge of the crime and the power of detecting it-unable to sympathize with the guilty indifference and contempt which thus abetted the treason, they could only reserve and store the facts obtained, for the prevention of the same outrages in coming contests, momentous and universal in interest.

The republican of the ages of classic heathenism, in horror of such crimes against that universal sanction of human testimony and law, the solemn adjuration of the powers invisible and eternal, perverted by hideous conspiracy to the destruction of the sacred safeguards of liberty and justice, would have imprecated on the perjured betrayers of his country, the wrath of its tutelar deities, and would, by the sable offering and mystic rite, have evoked the INFERNAL JOVE, avenger of violated oaths, with the merciless Eumenides, and all the Stygian train. The Christian freeman,

helplessly beholding the dreadful prodigies of modern crime, could but stand still, and wait in faith to see the judg ments of the people's Eternal King and Divine Protector, who "will not hold him guiltless THAT TAKETH HIS NAME IN VAIN;" commending the perjurers and their silent, indolent, indifferent abettors alike and together, to the slow but certain justice of GOD THE AVENGER.

[The details of the New Plan of fraud, and its operations and effects in the Elections of 1844, will be given in the next number of the American Review.]