. Tweed
made the election officers, and the election officers were corrupt.
Thirty thousand votes were falsely added to the Democratic majority in
New York and Brooklyn alone. Taxes and elections were the mere spoil
and booty of a corrupt junta in Tammany. Usurpation and fraud
inaugurated a carnival of corrupt disorder; and obscene birds without
number swooped down to the harvest and gorged themselves on every side
in plunder and spoliation."[1207]

[Footnote 1204: New York _Tribune_, November 6, 1868.]

[Footnote 1205: _Ibid._, November 7.]

[Footnote 1206: _Ibid._, November 23.]

[Footnote 1207: From speech of Conkling delivered in the U.S. Senate,
April 24, 1879.--Thomas V. Cooper, _American Politics_, Book 3, p.
180.]

When Congress convened a committee, appointed to investigate
naturalisation frauds in the city of New York, reported that prior to
1868 the Common Pleas and Superior Courts, controlling matters of
naturalisation, annually averaged, from 1856 to 1867, 9,000 new
voters, but that after the Supreme Court began making citizens on
October 6, 1868, the number rapidly increased to 41,112. Several
revelations added interest to this statement. Judge Daly served in the
Common Pleas, while McCunn, Barnard, Cardozo, and others whom Tweed
controlled, sat in the Supreme and Superior Courts. Daly required from
three to five minutes to examine an applicant, but McCunn boasted that
he could do it in thirty seconds, with the result that the Supreme
Court naturalised from 1,800 to 2,100 per day, whereas the Common
Pleas during the entire year acted upon only 3,140. On the other hand,
the Supreme and Superior Courts turned out 37,967. "One day last week
one of our 'upright judges,'" said the _Nation_, "invited a friend to
sit by him while he played a little joke. Then he left off calling
from the list before him and proceeded to call purely imaginary names
invented by himself on the spur of the moment: John Smith, James
Snooks, Thomas Noakes, and the like. For every name a man instantly
answered and took a certificate. Finally, seeing a person scratching
his head, the judge called out, 'George Scratchem!' 'Here,' responded
a voice. 'Take that man outside to scratch,' said his honour to an
usher, and resumed the more regular manufacture of voters."[1208]

[Footnote 1208: The _Nation_, October 29, 1868.]

To show that a conspiracy existed to commit fraud, the committee
submitted valuable evidence contributed by the