It is obvious that all these things come to pass through the fault of no one in particular. We have to-day reached the point where the public is beginning to understand that the iniquity is accomplished by means of the political boss. Every one is therefore abusing the boss. But Platt and Croker are not worse than the men who continue to employ them after understanding their function. These men stand for the conservative morality of New York, and for standards but little lower than the present standards. Let us now see how those standards came to exist. Imagine a community in which, for more than a generation, the government has been completely under boss rule, so that the system has become part of the habits and of the thought of the people, and consider what views we might expect to find in the hearts of the citizens of such a community. The masses will have been controlled by what is really bribery and terrorism, but what appears in the form of a very plausible appeal to the individual on the ground of self-interest. For forty years money and place have been corrupting them. Their whole conception of politics is that it is a matter of money and of place. The well-to-do will have been apt to prosper in proportion as they have made themselves serviceable to the dominant powers, and have become part and parcel of the machinery of the system. It is not to be pretended that every man in such a community is a rascal, but it is true that in so far as his business brings him into contact with the administrative officers every man will be put to the choice between lucrative malpractice and thankless honesty. A conviction will spread throughout the community that nothing can be done without a friend at court; that honesty does not pay, and probably never has paid in the history of the world; that a boss is part of the mechanism by which God governs mankind; that property would not be safe without him; and, finally, that the recognized bosses are not so bad as they are painted. The great masses of corporate property have owners who really believe that the system of government which enabled them to make money is the only safe government. These people cling to abuses as to a life-preserver. They fear that an honest police board will not be able to bribe the thieves not to steal from them, that an honest State insurance department will not be able to prevent the legislature from pillaging them. It is absolutely certain that in the first struggles for reform the weight of the mercantile classes will be thrown very largely on the side of conservatism.