With the simplicity which knows no better they deplore their ill-rewarded "industry," and describe their fraudulent practices as though they were a proper means of earning bread and butter. They have as little shame as repentance. Their only regrets are that they have been ruined by the police or forced to spend a few barren years in the State prison. And about them hover always detective and police-captain, ill-omened birds of prey, who feed upon the underworld. There is nothing more remarkable in this drama of theft and hunger than the perfect understanding which unites the criminal lamb and the wolfish upholder of the law. The grafter looks to his opponent for protection, and looks not in vain, so long as he has money in his pocket. The detective shepherds the law-breakers, whom he is appointed to arrest; he lives with them; he shares their confidences and their gains; he encourages their enterprise that he may earn a comfortable dividend; and he gives them up to justice when they are no longer worth defending. No dramatist that ever lived could do justice to this astounding situation, and it is the highest tribute to human ingenuity that few of the interlocutors fall below their opportunity. And it may be admitted that New York gave, and gives, an easy chance to policemen bent upon oppression. What can the poor, ignorant foreigners, who throng the east side of the city, do against their brutal and omnipotent guardians? "An impressive spectacle was presented to us one day," reports the Committee, "in the presence of about 100 patrolmen in uniform, who during the period of three preceding years had been convicted by the police commissioners of unprovoked and unwarranted assault on citizens." Still more impressive than "this exhibit of convicted clubbers" was "a stream of victims of police brutality who testified before the Committee. The eye of one man, punched out by a patrolman's club, hung on his cheek. Others were brought before the Committee, fresh from their punishment, covered with blood and bruises, and in some cases battered out of recognition." The whole city seemed the prey of a panic terror. One day "a man rushed into the session, fresh from an assault made upon him by a notorious politician and two policemen, and with fear depicted upon his countenance threw himself upon the mercy of the Committee and asked its protection, insisting that he knew of no court and of no place where he could in safety go and obtain protection from his persecutors." From all which it is plain that too high a price may be paid for the philanthropy of Tammany Hall, and that a self-governing democracy cannot always keep an efficient watch upon its guardians.