What he would have been able to accomplish had he been permitted to assume the functions of the great office to which the majority of his countrymen believed him to have been elected is matter of idle conjecture only; but the list of his achievements during the few years in which, upon a narrower theatre, he acted a public part can hardly be matched. Omitting from view the splendid contributions made by him from time to time, prior to 1871, by papers and speeches upon the principles of politics and the methods of governmental administration, and taking note only of the practical measures in the conception and execution of which he was the leader during the five short years in which, either as a private citizen or as public officer, he was actually engaged in the public service, we can distinctly impute to him the following results: In 1871 he seized the opportunity, suggested by the disclosure and publication of the prodigious sums drawn from the New York city treasury by way of pretended payment of municipal debts, to endeavor to fasten upon the principal city officials the crime, universally suspected, but of which there was no proof, of having corruptly embezzled to an enormous extent the moneys of the city. By a long and patient tracing of a multitude of accounts in different banks, he reached a series of results which, when compared, not only disclosed but conclusively demonstrated, by competent legal evidence, the whole scheme of fraud, the officials engaged in it, and the amounts received by each. Although a strict party man and chairman of the Democratic State Committee, yet, finding that the Democratic organization of the city of New York could not be wrested from the control of the official delinquents, he organized and led the popular movement which effected their overthrow. He accepted, at the same time, a nomination for the legislature, was elected, and extorted from a reluctant majority the impeachment of the corrupt judges who had disgraced the judicial ermine. In 1874, when the craze for fiat money had become prevalent throughout a great part of the country, and more threatening to the public prosperity than the free-silver delusion has at any time been, he drew from the Democratic State Convention of New York the first condemnation which it had received from either of the national parties. Elected in that year as Governor of the State, he conceived an extensive series of reforms in administration, drew the necessary legislative bills, secured their adoption, and carried them into effect. These plans contemplated, by the adoption of new methods and various economies, extensive reductions in the public expenditures, the institution of suits for the punishment of frauds of public officers, and the recovery of moneys embezzled by them. They had very large practical results.