carries a measure over to a future meeting, to any future meeting which may afford a prospect of its passage. The member who is engineering it watches his chance, labors with faltering members out of doors, and, as often as he thinks he can carry it, calls it up again, until at last the requisite eighteen are obtained. It has frequently happened that a member has kept a measure in a state of reconsideration for months at a time, waiting for the happy moment to arrive. There was a robust young Councilman who had a benevolent project in charge, of paying nine hundred dollars for a hackney-coach and two horses which a drunken driver drove over the dock into the river one cold night last winter. There was some disagreement in the Ring on this measure, and the robust youth was compelled to move for many reconsiderations. So, also, it was long before the wires could be all arranged to admit of the appointment of a "messenger" to the City Librarian, who has perhaps less to do than any man in New York who is paid eighteen hundred dollars a year; but perseverance meets its reward. We hear that this messenger is now smoking in the City Hall at a salary of fifteen hundred dollars.

There is a manœuvre also for preventing the attendance of obnoxious, obstructive members, like the honest six, which is ingenious and effective. A "special meeting" is called. The law declares that notice of a special meeting must be left at the residence or the place of business of every member. Mr. Roberts's residence and Mr. Roberts's place of business are eight miles apart, and he leaves his home for the day before nine in the morning. If Mr. Roberts's presence at a special meeting at 2 P. M. is desired, the notice is left at his shop in the morning. If it is not desired, the notice is sent to his house in Harlem, after he has left it. Mr. Pullman, cabinet-maker, leaves his shop at noon, goes home to dinner, and returns soon after one. If his presence at the special meeting at 2 P. M. is desired, the notice is left at his house the evening before, or at his shop in the morning. If his presence is not desired, the notice is left at his shop a few minutes after twelve, or at his house a few minutes past one. In either case, he receives the notice too late to reach the City Hall in time. We were present in the Councilmen's Chamber when Mr. Pullman stated this incon

venience, assuming that it was accidental, and offered an amendment to the rule, requiring notice to be left five hours before the time named for the meeting. Mr. Roberts also gave his experience in the matter of notices, and both gentlemen spoke with perfect moderation and good temper. We wish we could convey to our readers an idea of the brutal insolence with which Mr. Pullman, on this occasion, was snubbed and defrauded by a young bar-keeper who chanced to be in the chair. But this would be impossible without relating the scene at very great length. The amendment proposed was voted down with that peculiar roar of noes which is always heard in that chamber when some honest man attempts to put an obstacle in the way of the free plunder of his fellow-citizens.

These half-fledged legislators are acquainted with the device known by the name of the " previous question." We witnessed a striking proof of this. One of the most audacious and insolent of the Ring introduced a resolution, vaguely worded, the object of which was to annul an old paving contract that would not pay at the present cost of labor and materials, and to authorize a new contract at higher rates. Before the clerk had finished reading the resolution, honest Stephen Roberts sprang to his feet, and, unrolling a remonstrance with several yards of signatures appended to it, stood, with his eye upon the chairman, ready to present it the moment the reading was concluded. This remonstrance, be it observed, was signed by a majority of the property-owners interested, the men who would be assessed to pay for one half of the proposed pavement. Fancy the impetuous Roberts with the document held aloft, the yards of signatures streaming down to his feet and flowing far under his desk, awaiting the time when it would be in order for him to cry out, "Mr. President." The reading ceased. Two voices were heard, shouting, "Mr. President." It was not to Mr. Roberts that an impartial chairman could assign the floor. The member who introduced the resolution was the one who "caught the speaker's eye," and that member, forewarned of Mr. Roberts's intention, moved the previous question. It was in vain that Mr. Roberts shouted, "Mr. President." It was in vain that he fluttered and rattled his streaming ribbon of blotted paper. The President could not hear a word of any kind until

a vote had been taken upon the question whether the main question should be now put. That question was carried in the affirmative by a chorus of ayes, so exactly timed that it was like the voice of one man. Then the main question was put, and it was carried by another emphatic and simultaneous shout.

We have spoken of the headlong precipitation with which all business is done in this board. Measures involving an expenditure of millions, and designed to bind the city for a great number of years, are hurried through both boards in less time than paterfamilias expends in buying his Sunday dinner in the market; and, frequently, such measures are so mysteriously worded that no one outside of the Ring can understand their real object. We happened to be present when a resolution was brought directly from the Board of Aldermen (who had passed it without debate), directing the Street Commissioner to make a contract with the lowest bidder for lighting the whole island for twenty years with gas, the price to be fixed now, when coal and labor are twice their usual price. No such simple words, however, as twenty years were to be found in the resolution; which merely said, that the contract should be for "the same number of years as the contract last made and executed with the Manhattan Gas Company." A member, bewildered by the furiously rapid reading of this long and vague resolution, timidly inquired how many years that was. No one seemed to know. After a pause, some one said that he believed it was ten years. Whereupon, Councilman White, a faithful and intelligent member of the honest minority, proposed that the term of the contract be two years, which Mr. Pullman supported. The amendment was instantly voted down, and the original resolution was carried by the usual eighteen votes. The Mayor promptly vetoed the scheme. The Tribune thundered against it; but the veto message had no sooner been read, than it was passed over the veto by the Aldermen; then taken to the Councilmen's Chamber, where the requisite eighteen votes were immediately cast for it. This resolution, as we were afterwards informed, was merely one of a long series of measures designed to tap the lamp-posts of the city, like so many sugar-maples, and make them run gold into the troughs of a few notorious politicians.

We are lingering too long in the Councilmen's Chamber, and must abruptly leave it. Nor can we remain more than a moment with the Aldermen. It is not necessary, for there is not a pin to choose between the two bodies. We observe in their chamber the same lavishness of furniture and decoration ; pictures as numerous and as bad as those which hang in the chamber opposite; the same wild profusion of clerks, assistantclerks, readers, engrossers, messengers, and assistant-messengers; the same crowd of unwashed and ugly spectators outside the railing. Except that the Aldermen are a little older and somewhat better dressed than the Councilmen, we could discern no difference between them. Whatever dubious scheme is hurried through one body is rushed through the other. Sometimes the Councilmen point the game, and the Aldermen bring it down; and sometimes it is the Aldermen that start up the covey, and the Councilmen that fire. As with the Councilmen, so with the Aldermen, there is a sure three-fourths vote for every scheme which has the sanction of the interior circle who control the entire politics of the city. And, as among the Councilmen, so among the Aldermen there are a few honest and public-spirited men who vainly protest against iniquity, or silently cast their votes against it. If one such body is one too many, how shall we express the enormous superfluity of two? It is impossible.

But there is a third legislative board sitting in the City Hall. The island upon which New York is built is a county, and that county has its board of twelve Supervisors, who have the spending of seventeen millions of dollars per annum. The city and the county cover the same territory. Each creature in the island of Manhattan lives both in the county and in the city of New York. The existence, therefore, of a separate legislature for each is a complete absurdity; and, if both were honest, there would be constant danger of clashing between them. They do not often clash, because both have in view the same object, and pursue that object under the direction of a central gang, the masters of both. It is the Board of Supervisors who, being authorized, eight years ago, to build a court-house at an expense not to exceed two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, have expended upon it two millions and a half; and there it stands

to-day just half done. It is computed, by architects professionally employed, that for every dollar spent upon this unfinished edifice another dollar has gone elsewhere.

Our principal object in this article is not to present the reader with a startling catalogue of iniquities, but to endeavor to contribute our little towards discovering a mode of expelling the thieves, keeping them expelled, and getting a few honest men in the place of that great multitude of plunderers. Before entering upon that part of our subject, however, we must show to readers remote from the scene, that the corruption exists, that it taints nearly every branch of the public service, that it is an evil of gigantic and menacing proportions, and that the numerous expedients devised for holding it in check have failed. Hitherto we have related what we have ourselves seen and heard: we now proceed to glean a few of the more striking facts from our notes of what others have told us and from printed testimony.

The volume the title of which may be found at the head of this article, "The Manual of the Common Council," is itself a curious specimen of the artifices resorted to by these official plunderers of the public purse. In the year 1841, a zealous assistant clerk to the Common Council conceived the idea of publishing a little volume, which should be a kind of city almanac; containing, besides what an almanac usually presents, a list of all the persons connected with the city government, their places of business and residence, and a map of the city. A neat, small volume of 180 pages was the result of his labors. Even this was unnecessary, because the most useful part of the information which it gave respecting the members of the government had already appeared in the City Directory, and an almanac could be had of pill-venders for nothing. No good reason could be given why even so inexpensive a work as that should be paid for out of the public treasury. But see to what proportions this trifling imposition has since grown. The next year, our zealous assistant clerk added to his catalogue of city officials a list of all previous members of the Corporation, from the earliest period of the city's existence, and a picture of New York as it was two hundred years ago. This year the volume swelled from 180 to 253 pages. The picture was interesting, and