“It is necessary,” said Mr. Godkin, “to reduce to its lowest possible point the number of executive officers whom the community has to watch.” Mr. De Witt, Chairman of the Committee, who drafted the Charter for Greater New York, put the matter succinctly when he wrote:--“I am for a Tsar-Mayor, with a short term, and a free right to go again to the people”; and then he added, recurring to the curious vein of fatalism which in Napoleon found expression in a belief in his destiny, “I believe that the Supreme Ruler of the universe moves through the mind of the multitude, and in this age of free schools and ubiquitous journalism, no mayor with plenary power and full responsibility would dare to permit corruption or inefficiency to exist in any department. If he did, the people would have only one head to hit, and one party to demolish.” This change, to which we may take it American reformers are now definitely committed, may be, as Mr. E. M. Shephard declared, “the most important gain in municipal reform in our time,” or it may be the first step down the inclined plane which leads to despotism. My duty is not to dogmatise, but merely to describe. All that I would venture to observe by way of comment is that the new reform seems to be at variance, not only with the universally accepted English idea, which may, of course, be ignored, but equally with the Jeffersonian theory of the fundamental principle of Local Government. It may be necessary to fight fire with fire, and to cast out the Boss by the Tsar-Mayor, but old-fashioned Liberals may be pardoned if they feel that it is a very dangerous game to cast out the Devil by the aid of Beelzebub, the Prince of Devils. [Illustration: DR. ALBERT SHAW. Editor of the _Review of Reviews_, New York.] CHAPTER III. THE CHARTER OF GREATER NEW YORK. The Charter of Greater New York is the last, or rather the latest, of a long series of Charters granted by the State Legislature of New York for the government of the city. There were eleven distinct Charters granted between 1846 and 1890, so that the average life of a Charter is only four years. The Charter preceding this was regarded by Mr. Godkin as the best because it reduced the elective element almost to vanishing point:-- No community as heterogeneous as ours can manage its affairs successfully through democratic forms without reducing to its lowest possible point the number of executive officers whom it has to watch, and call to account when things go wrong. As soon as responsibility is widely diffused in such a community, “deals” or bargains between politicians for the division of the offices at once begin.