Thus, to recapitulate, the Astors debauched, swindled and murdered the Indians; they defrauded the city of land and of taxes; they assisted in corrupting legislatures; they profited from the ownership of blocks of death-laden tenement houses; they certified to thieving administrations. Once having wrested into their possession the results of all of these and more fraudulent methods in the form of millions of dollars in property, what was their strongest ally? The Law. Yes, the Law, theoretically so impartial and so reverently indued with awe--and with force. From fraud and force the Astor fortune came, and by force, in the shape of law, it was fortified in their control. If a starving man had gone into any one of the Astor houses and stolen even as much as a silver spoon, the Law would have come to the rescue of outraged property by sentencing him to prison. Or if, in case of a riot, the Astor property was damaged, the Law also would have stepped in and compelled the county to idemnify. This Law, this extraordinary code of print which governs us, has been and is nothing more or less, it is evident, than so many statutes to guarantee the retention of the proceeds of fraud and theft, if the piracy were committed in a sufficiently large and impressive way. The indisputable proof is that every single fortune which has been obtained by fraud, is still privately held and is greater than ever; the Law zealously and jealously guards it. So has the Law practically worked; and if the thing is to be judged by its practical results, then the Law has been an instigator of every form of crime, and a bulwark of that which it instigated. Seeing that this is so, it is not so hard to understand that puzzling problem of why so large a portion of the community has resolved itself into a committee of the whole, and while nominally and solemnly professing the accustomed and expected respect for Law, deprecates it, as it is constituted, and often makes no concealment of contempt. LAW THE STRONGEST ASSET.