The Corrupt Legislature.

New York, 1895

Republicans of good character never quarrel with the high-minded views of Harper's Weekly because the paper represents the highest and truest type of Republicanism and stands for the best interests of the party and for good government. The Republican legislature is severely dealt with in the last issue of the paper, and an appeal is made to the people of the state to elect a legislature of honest men to complete the work of reform. "The task that was left to the Legislature," says Harper's, "was not performed. The rascals at Albany did their best to arrange the laws in such a manner that if the boys ever do return to power in the city the good citizens will not again be able to drive them out without meeting even greater difficulties than they encountered last fall." This is true enough.

"At the coming elections," it says, "it will be for the people of the country to show that they can be as virtuous as the people of the city have been. Dr. Parkhurst urges them to "set back-fires" in certain counties. No better advice can be followed. Certainly Lexow, Robertson, Coggeshall, O'Connor, Reynolds, ought not to be members of the new Senate. Indeed, it would be difficult to point out a Senator who ought to be reelected. In the new Assembly, with a few honorable exceptions, every old member from Fish down should be defeated."

Harper's argues that "the thorough renovation of the Legislature is what the people of the state owe to the city as well as to the general cause of good government. If the rural districts cannot accomplish the overthrow of the men who prevented the consummation of municipal reform in this city, the rural voters are not as virtuous as the city's voters. The voters of the state are on trial, and it is to be hoped that they will come out of the ordeal as well as the city came out of its ordeal last fall. Bad assemblymen were elected because the people were too intent on the municipal and gubernatorial elections to guard against the nomination of bad men for the legislature."

"This year they need think of nothing else but legislators, and they have the power to defeat the gang that disgraced them at Albany quite as effectually as they thrashed Hill and Croker and Platt. If the reformers organize throughout the state they can teach Lexow, Coggeshall, Fish, and the others a lesson that they will not soon forget. The party that will nominate good men for the senate and assembly will defeat the party that nominates bad men. And this being so, the Democrats have as good a chance as the Republicans to elect a majority of the new legislature, and it will be wise for both parties to remember that the new senate will vote for the next United States senator."

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, NY, June 28, 1895, p. 4.