The account of past misrule placed on record in the Report of the Lexow Committee cannot be effaced from the page of history. It is a useful and timely service to Tammany itself to popularise the findings of that Committee, if only to remind the men, who are now summoned to make New York the ideal city of the world, of the hole from which they were digged. A vivid remembrance of the horrible pit and the miry clay has ever been regarded as salutary for the pilgrim to the Celestial City. Nothing is more likely to help Mr. Croker and his men to try to obey the Apostolic maxim to forget the things that are behind in order to press forward to those which are before, than the knowledge that every one can give chapter and verse in support of their belief that New York under Tammany rule in the past really deserved the title of “Satan’s Invisible World.” On that point there is no longer any room for difference of opinion. To question it is to justify disbelief in the honesty of the sceptic or the sincerity of his professions as a Reformer. But we may well be content to let the dead past bury its dead if, rising upon the wreck and ruin of these evil days, Tammany should now attain to nobler things. There is at least one great historical precedent justifying a hope that this may be so. When Madcap Hal succeeded to the English throne, there was the same jubilant exultation among Falstaff, Bardolph and all the roystering crew when Pistol rushed in helter-skelter, crying:-- And tidings do I bring, and lucky joys, And golden times, and happy news of price. But the story of their disappointment is one of the most familiar and dramatic scenes in the history of the English-speaking race. The question now is whether Mr. Croker will dare to address his old companions of misrule in the words of Henry the Fifth:-- Presume not that I am the thing I was: For Heaven doth know, so shall the world perceive, That I have turn’d away my former self; So will I those that kept me company. If so we may hope that it may be in New York even as it was in olden time in England, and that it may be said of the era that opened when Tammany elected the first Mayor of Greater New York by 85,000 majority:-- Yea, at that very moment, Consideration like an angel came, And whipp’d the offending Adam out of him. * * * * * Never came reformation in a flood, With such a heady current scouring faults; Nor never Hydra-headed wilfulness So soon did lose his seat, and all at once, As in this King. THE END. APPENDIX. MAYOR VAN WYCK’S PROGRAMME.