his city." {78}

Besides passing this infamous charter, the Ring proceeded to fortify
their position with special legislation, designed to protect them against
any effort of the citizens to drive them from office, or punish them.
This done, they had unlimited control of all the public affairs, and
could manage the elections as they pleased, and they believed they were
safe.

The "Committee of Seventy," appointed by the citizens of New York to
investigate the charges against the municipal authorities, thus speak of
the effect of the adoption of the New Charter, in their report presented
at the great meeting at Cooper Institute, on the 2d of November, 1871:

"There is not in the history of villainy a parallel for the gigantic
crime against property conspired by the Tammany Ring. It was engineered
on the complete subversion of free government in the very heart of
Republicanism. An American city, having a population of over a million,
was disfranchised by an open vote of a Legislature born and nurtured in
Democracy and Republicanism, and was handed over to a self-appointed
oligarchy, to be robbed and plundered by them and their confederates,
heirs and assigns for six years certainly, and prospectively for ever. A
month's exhumation among the crimes of the Tammany leaders has not so
familiarized us with the political paradox of the New Charter of the City
of New York, that we do not feel that it is impossible that the people of
this State gave to a gang of thieves, politicians by profession, a
charter to govern the commercial metropolis of this continent--the great
city which is to America what Paris is to France--to govern it with a
government made unalterable for the sixteenth part of a century, which
substantially deprived the citizens of self-control, nullified their
right to suffrage, nullified the principle of representation--which
authorized a handful of cunning and resolute robbers to levy taxes,
create public debt, and incur municipal liabilities without limit and
without check, and which placed at their disposal the revenues of the
great municipality and the property of all its citizens.

"Every American will say: 'It is incredible that this has been done.'
But the history of the paradox is over two years old. And it is a
history of theft, robbery, and forgery, which have stolen and divided
twenty millions of dollars; which have run up the city debt from
$36,000,000 in 1869 to $97,000,000 in 1871, and which