"Our multitude of judges, with equal powers, were perceived by him to furnish a hopeful quarry. One wicked, weak, or manageable could be found somewhere. The next item in his scheme for making judicial proceedings do the work which a bolder thief might seek to accomplish by piracy, highway robbery, or counterfeiting was to engage himself in quarrels where an unlimited number of separate suits by separate plaintiffs might be brought before different judges--all aimed at the same substantial object. This enabled him to make almost at random all sorts of harassing movements against the same parties. Slap-dash, hit or miss, he poured his shot upon the selected victims, the loss of a suit or failure of a movement troubling him not, the number of strings to his bow making this of no more consequence to him than the loss of a single soldier to the general of an army. "You are aware that any single stockholder in a private or trading corporation may file a bill in equity against the corporation itself, its managing officers, and any one else suggesting malversation, and, of course, such a suit has all the usual incidents of receivership, injunctions, etc., etc. With a desperate Wall Street swindler for plaintiff, an utterly unscrupulous legal practitioner to direct it, and an unprincipled or manageable judge, the blackmailing capabilities of such a suit are not slight. And when you consider that the stock is always in the market, and that five shares, or, indeed, a single share, may be sufficient to qualify a plaintiff, you see the readiness with which a lot of these suits, like a swarm of insects in summer, may harass. It was with this single scrap of technical knowledge that the Attorney-General for Scoundrels qualified himself for his office. In a very large degree he has lived upon it ever since. "It was in analogy to this right of the stockholder of a private corporation that some well-intentioned persons devised the scheme of judicially restraining municipal and other public officers from improper action. I believe the history of the rise and fall of this idea may be found in a long argument of mine reported in 'Wetmore _v._ Story,' _22_ or _23 Barbour_. You have read it and spoken of it to me. There is no analogy between the cases, and no basis in our common-law or customary jurisprudence for the pretended right of a taxpayer thus to intervene. The inconveniences of such a practice would be enormous. It should not be permitted. "Using a noted and life-long corruptionist, Charles Devlin, one of Tweed's bail, the Scoundrel's Attorney-General has brought a suit of this kind intended to perplex the Ring prosecutions and aid in misleading the thoughtless readers of their partisan journals.