The same characteristic is observable in all of them. Whether it is Boss Tweed, appealing confidently to the verdict of honest men upon a career of colossal theft and almost inconceivable fraud; or Mr. Croker, who, after surveying his whole life, declares that he has not discovered a single action which he has reason to regret, for he has not done anything but good all his life; or Bourke Cochran, who was at one time the Apollo and the Demosthenes of Tammany, the same unctuous rectitude oozes out of every pore. When Tammany was at its heyday of prosperity and power in 1889, it assembled in its thousands to cheer enthusiastically the impassioned oratory of Mr. Cochran, who declared, as among the self-evident truths which found an echo in every breast, that “if corruption prevails among the people, liberty will become a blighting curse, subversive of order. Corruption once begun, decay is inevitable and irresistible; the destruction of the Republic is immediate, immeasurable, irredeemable; since history does not record a case of a popular government which has been arrested in its downward course.” Tammany listened to this with ecstatic admiration, cheered to the echo their eloquent oracle, and then went on using the proceeds of a system of blackmail for the perfecting of an engine of corruption to which it is difficult to discover a parallel in the annals of mankind. In Mr. Croker’s case, his calm consciousness of incorruptible virtue seems to be based upon a curious inversion of a belief in a Divine Providence. Tammany is not strong in theology, but Mr. Croker, in talking to me, based his argument in favour of the excellence of Tammany on the postulate that the government of the universe was founded on the law of righteousness. This being the case, it was only possible to reconcile the continued existence of Tammany on one of two hypotheses. Either the domination of evil was permitted for a season for some sufficient cause hidden in the inscrutable mysteries of the Divine councils, or we must boldly assert that, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, Tammany rule was in accordance with the eternal law, _Credo quia impossibile_, rather than admit that so great an anomaly as a terrestrial Inferno could be permitted to exist by the good government of God. Mr. Croker, of course, adopted the latter hypothesis. There is much in it, no doubt, especially to those in Mr. Croker’s position. It is, however, open to the fatal objection that the same process of logic would _à fortiori_ secure a certificate of good conduct for the Great Assassin of Stamboul himself. The Ottoman Empire has lasted even longer than Tammany Hall, but even Mr. Croker would shrink from maintaining that Abdul Hamid was on that account the exemplary vicegerent of the Almighty.