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

          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.