"Twenty senators, recollect, who are to act in relation to
interests deeply affecting you. Can you afford to erect such a
government of blacks over the white men of this continent? Will you
give them control in the United States Senate and thus in fact
disfranchise the North? This to you is a local question. It will
search you out just as surely as the tax-gatherer searches you
out."[1145]

[Footnote 1145: New York _World_, October 25, 1867.]

Republicans acknowledged their weakness. An opposition that invited
attention to disclosures as sensational and corrupt as they were
indefensible had deeper roots than ordinary political rivalry, while
the question of manhood suffrage, like a legacy of reciprocal hate,
aroused the smouldering prejudices that had found bitter expression
during the discussion of emancipation. Moreover, the feeling developed
that the narrow and unpatriotic policy which ruled the Syracuse
convention had displaced good men for unsatisfactory candidates. This
led to the substitution of Thomas H. Hillhouse for comptroller, whose
incorruptibility made him a candidate of unusual strength. But the
sacrifice did not change the political situation, aggravated among
other things by hard times. The wave of commercial depression which
spread over Europe after the London financial panic of May, 1866,
extended to this country during the last half of 1867. A reaction from
the inflated war prices took place, quick sales and large profits
ceased, and a return to the old methods of frugality and good
management became necessary. In less than two years the currency had
been contracted $140,000,000, decreasing the price of property and
enhancing the face value of debts, and although Congress, in the
preceding February, had suspended further contraction, business men
charged financial conditions to contraction and the people held the
party in power responsible.

Indeed, the people had become tired of Republican rule, and their
verdict changed a plurality of 13,000, given Fenton in 1866, to a
Democratic majority of nearly 48,000, with twenty-two majority on
joint ballot in the Legislature. New York City gave the Democrats
60,000 majority. Thousands of immigrants had been illegally
naturalised, and a fraudulent registration of 1,500 in one ward
indicated the extent of the enormous frauds that had been practised by
Boss Tweed and his gang;[1146] but the presence of large Democratic
gains in the up-State counties showed