Now, in a great city like New York the mercantile _bourgeoisie_ will include almost every one who has an income of five thousand dollars a year, or more. These men can be touched by the bosses, and therefore, after forty years of tyranny, it is not to be expected that many of those who wear black coats will have much enthusiasm for reform. It is “impracticable;” it is “discredited;” it is “expensive;” it is “advocated by unknown men;” it speaks ill of the “respectable;” it “does harm” by exciting the poor against the rich; it is “unbusinesslike” and “visionary;” it is “self-righteous.” We have accordingly had, in New York city, a low and perverted moral tone, an incapacity to think clearly or to tell the truth when we know it. This is both the cause and the consequence of bondage. A generation of men really believe that honesty is bad policy, and continue to be governed by Tammany Hall. * * * * * The world has wondered that New York could not get rid of its famous incubus. The gross evils as they existed at the time of Tweed are remembered. The great improvements are not generally known. Reform has been slow, because its leaders have not seen that their work was purely educational. They did not understand the political combination, and they kept striking at Tammany Hall. Like a child with a toy, they did not see that the same mechanism which caused Punch to strike caused Judy’s face to disappear from the window. It is not selfishness and treason that are mainly responsible for the discredit which dogs “reform.” It is the inefficiency of upright and patriotic men. The practical difficulty with reform movements in New York has been that the leaders of such movements have clung to old political methods. These men have thought that if they could hire or imitate the regular party machinery, they could make it work for good. They would fight banditti with bravi. They would expel Tammany Hall, and lo, Tammany is within them. Is it a failure of intellect or of morality which prevents the reformers from seeing that idealism is the shortest road to their goal? It is the failure of both. It is a legacy of the old tyranny. In one sense it is corruption; in another it is stupidity; in every sense it is incompetence. Political incompetence is only another name for moral degradation, and both exist in New York for the same reason that they exist in Turkey. They are the offspring of blackmail.